EflM    S3S 


The  Highway 


A  Matter  of  Fact 

Examination  of 

the  Greatest 

Event   in 

History 


GIFT   ©F 


The  Highway 


A  Matter  of  Fact 

Examination  of 

the  Greatest 

Event    in 

History 


"A    Highway    shall    be    there    and    a    WAY" 
Isaiah,    xxxv,    8 


jfulfilment 

"Jesus    said,    I    am    the    WAY" 
John,    xiv,   6 


New  York 
THOMAS  WHITTAKER,   Inc. 


Copyright  1913 

BY 
THOMAS  WHITTAKER,  Inc. 


All  Rights  Reserved 


PREFACE. 

"What  will  this  babbler  say?"  was  asked  when 
Paul  the  Apostle  came  to  the  Athenians  bringing 
them  the  "good  news"  of  the  resurrection  of  the 
Lord  Jesus  Christ !  Perhaps  the  same  question  will 
be  asked  when  one  presumes,  at  this  late  day,  to 
add  another  word  on  a  subject,  nearly  2000  years 
old,  which  men  generally  consider  as  having  been 
settled  long  centuries  ago.  Should  it  be  asked,  a 
few  words  will  answer  it. 

"That  Christ  Jesus  came  into  the  world  to  save 
sinners"  is  not  only  "a  faithful  saying  and  worthy 
of  all  acceptation"  but  one  that  has  been  very  gen- 
erally accepted ;  nevertheless,  from  what  men  were 
to  be  saved  and  by  what  means  have  in  the  course 
of  centuries  become  enveloped  in  a  shroud  of  mys- 
tery which  few  have  been  able  to  penetrate  satis- 
factorily. When  our  Lord  ascended  into  the 
heavens,  we  are  told,  a  cloud  received  him,  and  a 
cloud,  the  cloud  of  theology,  has  ever  since  partially 
obscured  him  from  men's  sight.  For  a  thousand 
years  after  our  Lord's  ascension  a  terrible  and 
wicked  falsehood  concerning  the  purpose  of  his 
coming  into  this  world  of  ours  was  not  only 
imagined,  but  openly  taught  throughout  Christen- 
dom ;  and  for  the  best  part  of  another  thousand 
years  there  have  been  taught  concerning  this  same 
event,  doctrines,  which  to  say  the  least,  have  not 

3 


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.    .        .       •       •  , 

'  '         . 

<         f   I       i  i      i 


been  acceptable  to  all  who  have  given  thought  to 
them.     The  consciousness  that  there  is  something 
wrong  has  created  a  spirit  of  unrest  among  Chris- 
tian   men    and    led    many    to    doubt,    and    some, 
in    the    exercise    of    their    imagination,    to    deny 
fundamental   facts   of   the   Christian   religion,   the 
divinity   of   our   Lord,    his    miraculous    birth,    and 
his  glorious   resurrection !     But,   if  there  be   any- 
thing wrong,  it  is  not  with   matters  of   fact,  but 
with  matters  of  opinion.     In  the  few  chapters  of 
this  book  an  attempt  has  been  made  to  set  down, 
as  nearly  as  possible  in  the  language  in  which  it  has 
come  down  to  us,  the  purpose  of  the  coming  of 
the   Lord   as   it   seems   to   have   been   revealed   by 
himself,    the   greatest   of    them,   and   those   other 
Holy  Prophets,  who,  from  Isaiah  to  John  the  Bap- 
tist were  preparing,  in  the  wilderness  of  the  world 
a   Highway    for   him  to   pass   over.     A   Highway 
that  is  still  not  without  obstruction.     The  book  is 
not  a  contribution  to  controversial  theology ;  but  a 
summary  of  facts  suggestively  but  not  exhaustively 
presented,   from  which  the  reader  who  is   free  to 
consider  them  with  a  mind  unbiassed  may  draw  his 
own  conclusions.     If  these  differ  from  those  sug- 
gested in  the  book  no  harm  will  have  been  done ; 
while  if  they  are  in  agreement  with  them  a  window 
will  have  been  opened  in  his  mind  through  which 
he  may  behold  a  vision  of  Christian  Unity  based 
upon  a  foundation  of  Christian  Truth. 

"Our  little  systems  have  their  day; 
They   have    their    day,    and    cease   to    be : 
They  are  but  broken  lights  of  Thee, 
And  thou,  O  Lord,  art  more  than  they." 

4 


THE  TEXT. 

Then  began  Jesus  to  speak  to  the  people  this  parable  : 

A  certain  man  planted  a  vineyard  and  let  it  forth  to 
husbandmen  and  went  into  a  far  country  for  a  long  time. 
And  at  the  season  he  sent  a  servant  to  the  husbandmen, 
that  they  should  give  him  of  the  fruit  of  the  vineyard; 
but  the  husbandmen  beat  him  and  sent  him  away  empty. 
And  again  he  sent  another  servant ;  and  they  beat  him  also, 
and  treated  him  shamefully  and  sent  him  away  empty. 
And  again  he  sent  a  third ;  and  they  wounded  him  also 
and  cast  him  out.  Then  said  the  Lord  of  the  vineyard, 
What  shall  I  do  ?  I  will  send  my  beloved  Son ;  it  may  be 
they  will  reverence  him  when  they  see  him.  But  when  the 
husbandmen  saw  him,  they  reasoned  among  themselves, 
saying,  This  is  the  heir ;  come,  let  us  kill  him,  that  the 
inheritance  may  be  ours.  So  they  cast  him  out  of  the 
vineyard  and  killed  him. 

What,  therefore,  shall  the  Lord  of  the  vineyard  do 
unto  them? 

He  shall  come  and  destroy  these  husbandmen  and  shall 
give  the  vineyard  to  others. 

And  when  they  heard  it,  they  said,  God  forbid. 

Jesus  saith  unto  them,  Did  ye  never  read  in  the 
scriptures, 

The  stone  which  the  builders  rejected, 
The  same  is  become  the  head  of  the  corner : 
This  is  the  Lord's  doing 
And    it   is   marvellous    in   our    eyes? 

Therefore  I  say  unto  you,  The  kingdom  of  God  shall  be 
taken  from  you  and  given  to  a  nation  bringing  forth  the 
fruits  thereof. 

Luke   xx,   9.     Matt,   xxi,   42. 


CHAPTER  I. 


"THEN  SAID  i :  *LO  i  COME 


TO  DO  THY  WILL!' 

Ps.  xl,  7. 

HPHE  greatest  event  in  the  history  of  the  human 
race  since  the  creation  of  man,  was  the  birth 
of  Jesus  Christ,  the  appearance  of  God  on  earth  in 
human  flesh,  commonly  called  the  INCARNA- 
TION. 

This  proposition  is  not  stated  for  the  purpose  of 
argument  or  of  proof.  The  incarnation  is,  beyond 
all  doubt,  the  central  FACT  in  a  system  upon  which 
the  eternal  happiness  of  all  humanity  depends,  and 
is  here  so  regarded. 

Before  the  coming  to  pass  of  the  event,  the  in- 
carnation was  the  great  theme  of  DIVINE  REV- 
ELATION ;  afterwards,  it  became  a  theme  of  end- 
less HUMAN  SPECULATION.  From  this  human 
speculation  has  been  evolved  and  formulated  what 
is  called  CHRISTIAN  THEOLOGY,  theology 
meaning  literally  the  Science  of  God. 

If  this  is  not  always  entirely  satisfactory  to  those 
who  teach  it  or  those  who  are  taught,  the  probable 
reason  is,  that  the  Christian  religion  is  unadapted 
to  scientific  treatment.  But,  if  it  were  otherwise,  it 
must  be  remembered  that  Christian  theology  had  its 

6 


beginning  in  an  age  long  before  men  had  learned 
that  the  only  real  foundation  of  science  is  the  ex- 
amination of  facts  and  reached  its  final  development 
at  a  time  when  men  gave  greater  credence  to  their 
theories  than  to  the  evidence  of  their  senses. 

What  follows  is  a  brief  examination,  without 
regard  to  the  speculations  of  human  interpreters, 
into  what  seems  to  have  been  the  FACTS  di- 
vinely taught  concerning  the  purpose  contemplated 
by  the  birth,  in  an  obscure  corner  of  the  Roman 
empire,  in  the  reign  of  Augustus,  of  the  infant 
Jesus. 

Into  a  discussion  of  that  subtle  network  of  doc- 
trine which  has  been  woven  around  the  incarnation 
it  does  not  enter;  but  as  we  are,  in  the  course  of 
the  examination  proposed,  certain  to  come  in  con- 
tact with  it  we  must  take  into  account  that  modicum 
of  theology  which  is  now  generally  held  by  all 
Christian  people,  without  distinction,  concerning 
the  MISSION  of  our  Lord.  This  may  be  briefly 
and  moderately  summarized  somewhat  to  this  effect : 

That  it  was  a  LOST  WORLD  that  the  Son  of 
Man  came  to  seek  and  to  save.  That  this  world  was 
lost  through  the  failure  of  the  first  created  man  to 
obey  a  certain  commandment  given  him,  by  which 
failure,  sin  and  death  were  brought  into  the  world 
and  human  nature  was  permanently  corrupted ;  sin 
being  thenceforward  a  hereditary  or  congenital  dis- 
ease from  which  no  one  has  since  been  able  to 
escape. 

That  the  rejection  and  sufferings  of  the  Lord 
Jesus  Christ  were  PREDESTINED  and  unavoid- 

7 


able;  the  crucifixion  being  a  necessary  SACRIFICE 
absolutely  demanded  by  existing  conditions. 

That  it  was  to  suffer  death  upon  the  cross  that 
our  Lord  humbled  himself  to  take  man's  nature 
upon  him,  and  that  from  the  beginning  of  his 
ministry  he  knew  what  its  end  would  be. 

Happily,  there  is  such  a  life-giving  force  in 
simple  faith  in  Jesus  Christ,  as  God  and  Saviour, 
that  mere  inability  to  comprehend  the  whole  truth 
concerning  him  cannot  deprive  his  followers  of  the 
blessings  which  the  incarnation  was  intended  to 
bring,  and  no  amount  of  diverse  and  contradictory 
teaching  has  been  able  to  make  this  faith  altogether 
ineffective.  Still,  any  teaching  which  conveys  an 
erroneous  notion  of  God's  dealings  with  his  chil- 
dren must,  in  some  measure  at  least,  be  detrimental 
to  the  spiritual  development  of  those  who  entertain 
it;  Error  being  now,  as  always,  the  greatest  foe  of 
Holiness.  Probably  all  the  wrong  doing  of  which 
the  world  has  any  record,  not  excepting  the  great- 
est of  all  wrong  doings,  might  be  traced  back  to 
the  NOT  KNOWING  of  those  who  thought  they 
knew.  "I  wot  that  through  ignorance  ye  did  it" 
said  Peter,  with  a  sublime  charity  learned  from 
Him  who  prayed,  ''Father  forgive  them  for  they 
KNOW  NOT  what  they  do".  "Error  and  dark- 
ness" declares  the  writer  of  Ecclesiasticus  "had 
their  beginning  together". 

While  abstract  theology  never  won  a  soul  to 
God,  doctrines  obnoxious  to  reason  we  know  have 
lost  many  a  one.  A  little  root  of  reasonable  doubt 
unsatisfied  weakens  the  foundation  of  faith  and 

8 


often  causes  the  total  destruction  of  the  superstruc- 
ture which  has  been  built  upon  it. 

Our  Father  does  not  require  of  his  children  that 
they  should  sacrifice  their  reason ;  but,  rather,  de- 
mands the  exercise  of  it : 

"He  that  made  us     *     * 
*     gave  us  not 

That  capability  and  Godlike   reason 

To  rust  in  us  unused" 

in  things  eternal,  any  more  than  in  things  temporal : 
"Come  now  and  let  us  reason  together"  he  saith. 
By  the  exercise  of  his  reason  man  has  raised  him- 
self to  his  present  high  position  in  the  animal  king- 
dom. By  this  Godlike  and  God-given  faculty  he 
maintains  his  position  above  the  level  of  the  brute. 
Bereft  of  reason  he  falls  below  it.  Reason  must 
always,  with  reasoning  and  reasonable  creatures, 
be  the  final  arbiter  of  every  proposition,  whether 
profane  or  sacred.  By  the  exercise  of  reason  alone, 
however,  man  cannot  hope  to  attain  to  a  perfect 
knowledge  of  God ;  he  tried  to  and  failed ;  but 
reason,  illuminated  by  the  light  of  divine  revela- 
tion, may  reasonably  aspire  to  that  knowledge  and 
love  of  God  which  constitute  TRUE  RELIGION. 
Without  reason,  religion  is  superstition ;  without 
revelation,  it  is  idolatry.  Of  true  religion,  all  we 
know  is  what  God  in  his  goodness  has  been  pleased 
to  reveal  to  us ;  that  which  he  is  not  pleased  to  re- 
veal to  us  must  remain  unknown.  No  human  hy- 
pothesis, however  scientific  or  ingenious,  can  sup- 
ply the  deficiencies  of  divine  revelation.  As  a  mis- 
sionary of  the  second  century  aptly  said  : 

"Where  God  is  silent,  it  is  not  wise  to  speak." 

9 


These  observations  may  seem  trite  and  common- 
place, but  they  are  made  here  mainly  by  way  of 
answer  to  those  who  hold  the  opinion  that  the 
Christian  religion  is  not  a  reasonable  thing,  or  who 
think  that  there  is  something  improper  in  applying 
their  everyday  reason  to  its  comprehension.  Truly, 
there  is  nothing  unreasonable  in  the  Christian  re- 
ligion, and  reason  can  have  no  higher  employment 
than  in  investigating  its  foundations. 

False  religion  has  always  discouraged  investi- 
gation. When  that  which  taxed  the  credulity  of 
its  votaries  was  inquired  into,  it  was  proclaimed  a 
mystery  too  sacred  for  any  but  the  initiated.  It 
is  not  necessary  so  to  bound  Christ's  religion,  every 
follower  of  which  is  initiated  on  equal  terms  and 
by  the  same  formalities,  whether  peasant,  priest 
or  king.  Rightly  considered  there  is  no  mystery  in 
the  Christian  religion.  It  consists  in  part  of  things 
revealed  and  of  things  unrevealed.  Whether  our 
contemplation  of  things  unrevealed  ends  simply  in 
amazement  or  in  insanity,  there  is  but  one  cause  for 
the  condition,  which  is  that  it  is  impossible  for  the 
unassisted  human  mind  to  comprehend  the  things 
of  God,  which  he,  for  his  purpose  has  covered  with 
a  veil.  "Secret  things",  said  Moses,  "belong  unto 
the  Lord  God,  revealed  things  to  us  and  our  chil- 
dren forever." 

Thanks  be  to  God  for  the  revelation  of  himself 
and  of  his  purposes  for  mankind  through  the  in- 
carnation of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  whereby  crea- 
tures of  dust  otherwise  doomed  to  dwell  in  dark- 
ness are  led  into  the  brightness  of  a  perpetual  light. 


CHAPTER  II. 

"THIS   IS   MY  BELOVED  SON  :   HEAR   HIM." 

Mark  xiv,  7. 

TO   THIS   END   AM    I    COME   INTO   THE   WORLD, 
THAT    I    SHOULD    BEAR    WITNESS    UNTO    THE 

TRUTH/''  John  xvm, 


" 


A  N  account  of  the  direct  revelations  of  God  to 
^^  man  concerning  their  mutual  relationship  is 
to  be  found  in  a  certain  book.  This  book  is  by 
universal  consent  called  by  a  name  which  means 
The  Book,  or  Book  of  all  books.  Really,  it  is 
a  collection  of  books  written  by  many  hands  in 
many  tongues  and  in  different  centuries,  brought 
together  under  a  general  title.  Its  authors  are  in 
some  cases  known  to  us,  in  others  they  are  anony- 
mous. It  comprises  prose  and  poetry,  biography, 
history  and  fiction,  a  compendium  of  law,  moral 
precepts  and  philosophical  maxims,  books  of  public 
and  private  devotion  and  the  recorded  words  of 
those  holy  prophets  who  in  different  ages,  have 
been  sent  into  the  world  to  declare  the  will  of  God. 
Each  individual  book  must  be  considered  by  itself, 
and  much  evil  has  been  done  by  considering  the 
Bible  as  an  entirety. 

ii 


The  book  has  two  principal  divisions  respectively 
entitled  the  OLD  TESTAMENT  and  the  NEW 
TESTAMENT.  Concerning  the  first  something 
may  be  said  later:  we  are  now  more  deeply  con- 
cerned with  the  latter ;  but  it  may  properly  be  noted 
here,  that  if  these  two  principal  divisions  of  the 
book  had  been  called  in  our  language  the  OLD 
COVENANT  and  the  NEW  COVENANT,  titles 
equally  agreeable  to  the  meaning  of  the  word  from 
which  Testament  is  derived,  we  should  have  the 
advantage  of  being  reminded,  whenever  we  think 
of  these  divisions,  of  the  essential  truths  the  Chris- 
tian religion  teaches ;  one,  that  the  Mosaic  Law  is 
OLD  and  obsolete,  and  the  other  that  that  which 
has  superseded  it  is  the  NEW  Covenant,  of  which 
the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  was  the  messenger  and 
preacher. 

Concerning  the  use  of  this  book,  there  are  sev- 
eral schools.  One  school  regards  its  authority  as 
supreme,  another  claims  that  there  is  authority 
equal,  if  not  superior,  to  it.  The  latter  school 
speaks  slightingly  of  the  religion  of  the  first  as 
a  religion  founded  on  a  book.  This  slight  might 
be  passed  over,  but  it  is  better  to  examine  the  state- 
ment. The  Christian  religion  is  not  founded  on  a 
book :  it  is  founded  on  the  word  of  God.  We  may 
write  this  expression  with  capital  letters,  if  we  will, 
but  however  its  significance  may  be  limited,  it  is 
obvious  that  no  other  authoritative  foundation  for  a 
religion  is  possible. 

The  principal  writers  of  the  New  Testament 
were  the  men  chosen  by  the  Lord  Jesus  himself  to 
disseminate  his  religion  throughout  the  world,  and 

12 


these  men  took  pains,  at  a  very  early  date,  to  pre- 
serve in  the  Gospels  and  in  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles, 
a  history  of  those  remarkable  events  of  which  they 
directly  or  indirectly  had  had  "a  perfect  under- 
standing". This  is  the  expression  of  the  evangel- 
ist Luke.  John,  the  evangelist  who  was  nearer 
to  our  Lord,  says :  'That  which  we  have  seen  and 
heard  declare  we  unto  you". 

The  fact  is,  and  this  fact  gives  the  Christian 
religion  an  advantage  as  to  authority  over  every 
other,  that  there  is  and  has  been  since  the  time  of 
Moses  at  least,  which  to  the  present  day  embraces 
a  period  of  nearly  four  thousand  years,  a  litera- 
ture which  has  concerned  itself  exclusively  with 
God's  dealings  with  man  and  has  recorded  these  as 
matters  of  history,  step  by  step,  through  every  age. 
'Thou  shalt  read  this"  said  Moses  "that  they  may 
hear  and  learn  and  that  their  children  which  have 
not  known  may  hear  and  learn."  "Have  ye  not 
read"  said  our  Saviour  many  times,  and  "It  is 
written",  repeatedly.  'They  have  Moses  and  the 
prophets"  said  he  "let  them  hear  them",  "Search 
the  scriptures".  The  Holy  Gospels  and  the  Acts 
of  the  Apostles  are  not  isolated  records,  but  an  in- 
tegral part  of  this  literature,  which  is  the  Church's 
cherished  and  very  choice  possession.  He  who 
said  "I  am  the  WAY,  the  TRUTH  and  the  LIFE" 
would  hardly  have  left  the  ages  to  come  without 
directions  unmistakable  for  finding  that  WAY,  that 
TRUTH  and  that  LIFE.  There  is  an  assuring 
note  of  personality  in  this  statement  of  our  Lord's 
akin  to  that  in  many  other  gracious  sayings  of  his : 
"He  that  cometh  to  ME,  I  will  in  no  wise  cast 

13 


out ;"  "I  am  the  good  shepherd ;"  "I  am  the  door ;" 
"Learn  of  ME;"  "If  any  man  thirst,  let  him  come 
unto  ME";  "My  sheep  hear  my  voice,  and  I  know 
them,  I  give  unto  them  eternal  life;  and  no  one 
shall  snatch  them  out  of  MY  hand;"  which  makes 
the  Christian  feel  impatient  of  any  interposed  au- 
thority between  himself  and  what  he  may  reason- 
ably believe  to  be  our  Saviour's  own  language.  Men 
would  not  speak  of  a  "traditional  Christ"  if  they 
realized  that  in  this  gospel  is  a  portrait  of  the  actual 
Christ,  under  which  may  truly  be  written,  as  the 
old  masters  used  to  write  under  their  portraits, 
pin.vit  ad  vivum;  a  portrait  painted  in  fadeless 
colors  very  unlike  the  lifeless  figures  since  painted 
by  human  hands.  It  is  this  living  figure  of  the 
Christ  of  the  Gospel,  of  the  LIGHT  which  lighteth 
every  man  which  cometh  into  the  world,  which  pre- 
serves the  unity  of  the  Christian  religion.  The  per- 
sonality of  our  Lord  stands  out  in  the  Gospels  as 
the  peak  of  a  mountain  sometimes  stands  out, 
clear  and  distinct  in  the  sunshine,  while  all  below 
is  enveloped  in  fog  or  cloud. 

Nor  is  it  necessary  to  look  further  than  the 
Gospel  for  the  whole  of  the  message  to  humanity 
with  which  the  Lord  Jesus  was  charged.  The  word 
Gospel  in  our  tongue  means  literally  "good  news", 
and  it  is  not  without  reason  that  we  believe  that 
the  actual  words  in  which  the  good  news  was  first 
told  have  been  preserved  to  us  by  our  Lord's  own 
appointment. 

The  beloved  disciple  tells  us  that  "when  Jesus 
knew  that  his  hour  was  come  when  he  should  de- 
part out  of  this  world  unto  the  Father",  that  is, 

14 


when  his  personal  ministrations  and  his  public  dis- 
courses had  been  brought  to  an  end,  the  cross  being 
but  a  few  hours  away,  and  he  could  look  forward 
to  the  work  he  had  undertaken  being  hencefor- 
ward carried  on  without  his  visible  presence,  there 
being  at  that  time  no  written  record  of  any  word 
which  he  had  spoken — the  only  writing  of  his  of 
which  there  is  any  authentic  record  having  been 
written  in  sand — our  Lord  promised  that  ONE 
should  bring  to  the  remembrance  of  the  apostles 
WHATSOEVER  THINGS  HE  HAD  SAID  TO 
THEM.  For  what  purpose  may  we  suppose  was 
this,  if  not  that  a  knowledge  of  these  things  might 
be  preserved  for  the  instruction  of  future  genera- 
tions as  an  authorized  record  of  the  doctrines  he 
himself  had  taught?  And  in  what  manner  were 
these  things,  which  he  had  said  to  them,  to  be  pre- 
served, if  not  in  writing? 

If,  then,  as  this  evangelist's  words  imply,  we 
have  the  authority  of  our  Lord  himself  for  the  in- 
spiration of  the  written  gospel,  or  at  least  so  much 
of  it  as  records  his  utterances, — an  authority  which 
does  not  extend  to  the  other  books  of  the  New 
Testament — it  would  seem  that  in  any  conflict  of 
opinion  as  to  the  doctrines  of  the  Christian  religion 
the  words  of  the  Lord  Jesus  contained  in  the  gospel 
should  be  decisive.  "The  words  that  /  speak  unto 
you"  said  he  "they  are  SPIRIT  and  they  are 
LIFE";  "Heaven  and  earth  shall  pass  away,  but 
my  words  shall  not  pass  away."  "Verily,  verily, 
1  say  unto  you,  He  that  heareth  my  words  and  be- 
lieveth  on  him  that  sent  me,  is  passed  from  death 
unto  life" .  Surely  it  is  not  unreasonable  to  believe 

15 


that  special  means  should  have  been  used  to  so 
preserve  words  of  such  immense  importance  that 
they  might  be  handed  down,  without  corruption, 
from  generation  to  generation  forever.  i4Whoso- 
ever  heareth  these  sayings  of  mine  and  doeth  them" 
said  our  Saviour  "I  will  liken  him  unto  a  wise 
man  which  built  his  house  upon  a  rock." 

The  manner  in  which  these  sayings  have  come 
down  to  us  is  not  important.  Had  the  Lord  Jesus 
ordained  that  his  bare  words  should  be  transmitted, 
from  one  age  to  another,  without  context,  we  should 
still  have  had  the  essentials  of  his  teaching;  but  as  a 
matter  of  fact  they  have  come  down  to  us  en- 
shrined, like  precious  jewels  in  a  golden  casket, 
within  the  narratives  of  the  Holy  Evangelists,  and 
we  believe  that  we  hear  to-day,  as  in  the  day  of 
Pentecost,  "every  man  in  our  own  tongue"  "the 
gracious  words  which  proceeded  out  of  his  mouth." 

There  was  a  time  when  it  was  thought  sinful 
to  question  anything  in  the  Bible,  but  to-day  we 
think  differently.  It  is  a  self-evident  proposition 
that  no  questioning  can  injure  TRUTH,  and  there 
is  no  reverent  criticism  that  the  WORD  of  GOD 
may  fear.  Irreverent  criticism  is  necessarily  out- 
side of  the  pale  of  consideration  by  Christian  peo- 
ple. Fault  finding  and  the  detection  of  flaws  are 
not  criticism.  Criticism  is  judgment,  and  any  just 
criticism  of  the  Bible  must  be  beneficial.  The  Bible 
criticised  is  like  a  diamond  recut;  if  its  substance 
is  reduced,  that  which  remains  shines  with  greater 
brilliancy.  Errors  of  copyists,  mistranslations  from 
one  language  to  another,  and  other  accidents  we 
may,  without  treason,  readily  acknowledge  to  have 

16 


occurred  during  the  thousands  of  years,  preceding 
the  introduction  of  the  art  of  printing,  during  which 
the  books  of  the  Bible  were  copied  and  recopied  by 
human  hands ;  and  the  wonder  is,  humanly  speak- 
ing, not  that  these  accidents  did  occur,  but  that  in 
spite  of  them,  the  truths  enshrined  in  the  original 
pages  are  still  so  clear  that  he  who  runs  may  read 
them.  "By  every  word  that  proceedeth  out  of  the 
mouth  of  God  shall  man  live"  said  Moses,  and  the 
apostle  Peter  added  'The  word  of  the  Lord  en- 
dureth  forever". 

We  have  not  to  consider  the  nature  of  IN- 
SPIRATION, but  we  must  remember  that  the 
supreme  and  only  full  revelation  of  God  to  man 
was  through  the  incarnation  of  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ.  No  man  hath  otherwise  seen  God  nor  so 
unmistakably  heard  words  from  his  mouth.  God, 
we  believe,  is  a  being  having  neither  hands,  nor 
feet,  nor  tongue,  and  when  he  requires  the  offices 
performed  for  which  these  members  are  designed  he 
has  to  enlist  human  agency.  The  Spirit  of  God 
inspired  the  prophets  of  old,  but  the  prophets  were 
human  beings  and  they  expressed,  with  the  limita- 
tions of  human  understanding  and  human  expres- 
sion, the  ideas  which  God  revealed  to  them ;  but 
when  Incarnate  God  came  to  visit  the  children  of 
men,  we  may  justly  reason  that  his  revelation  was 
without  such  limitations. 

As  at  dawn  of  day  the  stars  which  have  bright- 
ened and  made  beautiful  the  night  become  fainter 
and  fainter,  and,  as  the  sun  gains  power,  disap- 
pear, one  by  one,  until  at  last  there  is  in  the  heavens 
but  one  great  light  to  be  seen ;  so  the  light  shed  by 


the  prophets  and  teachers  who  went  before  the 
Lord,  pales  into  insignificance  before  that  great 
Light,  which,  having  once  attained  its  meridian, 
knew  no  going  down.  "God",  says  the  writer  of 
the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  "who  at  sundry  times 
and  in  divers  manners  spake  in  times  past  unto  the 
fathers  by  the  prophets  hath  in  these  last  days 
spoken  unto  us  by  his  Son  *  *  the  effulgence 
of  his  glory  and  the  exact  expression  of  his  sub- 
stance." Can  we  wonder  that  it  was  said  of  him 
"Never  man  spake  like  this  man"?  And  are  we 
not  justified  in  considering  that  the  words  from 
his  mouth  are  entitled  to  a  position  of  pre-eminence 
over  any  other  words  ever  written  or  spoken  since 
the  beginning  of  time?  In  these  pages  it  is  assumed 
that  we  are.  If  there  is  no  other  name  under  heaven 
whereby  men  may  be  saved,  surely  what  He  who 
bore  that  name  said  on  the  subject  or  manner  of 
that  salvation  should  be  man's  first,  if  not  his  only, 
study  in  it. 


CHAPTER  III. 
"THE  WORDS  THAT  i  SAY  UNTO  YOU  i  SPEAK 

NOT    FROM    MYSELF/'  John    XIV,    10. 

"i    WILL    OPEN    MY    MOUTH    IN    A    PARABLE/' 

Ps.  Ixxvm,  2. 

T7S7ITH  so  much  premised  by  way  of  introduc- 
tion we  are  now  prepared  to  take  up  our 
text.    Let  us  glance  at  it  again ;  Jesus  is  speaking : 

"A  certain  man  planted  a  vineyard  and  let  it  forth  to 
husbandmen,  and  went  into  a  far  country  for  a  long  time. 
And  at  the  season  he  sent  a  servant  to  the  husbandmen, 
that  they  should  give  him  of  the  fruit  of  the  vineyard : 
but  the  husbandmen  beat  him  and  sent  him  away  empty. 
And  again  he  sent  another  servant;  and  they  beat  him 
also,  and  entreated  him  shamefully,  and  sent  him  away 
empty.  And  again  he  sent  a  third ;  and  they  wounded  him 
also  and  cast  him  out.  Then  said  the  lord  of  the  vineyard, 
What  shall  I  do  ?  I  will  send  my  beloved  son ;  it  may  be 
they  will  reverence  him  when  they  see  him.  But  when  the 
husbandmen  saw  him,  they  reasoned  among  themselves, 
saying,  This  is  the  heir;  come  let  us  kill  him,  that  the 
inheritance  may  be  ours.  So  they  cast  him  out  of  the 
vineyard  and  killed  him. 

"What  therefore  shall  the  lord  of  the  vineyard  do 
unto  them? 

"He  shall  come  and  destroy  these  husbandmen,  and 
shall  give  the  vineyard  to  others." 

In  this  parable  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  has  re- 

19 


vealed,  under  the  similitude  of  an  earthly  story,  a 
circumstantial  account  of  the  purpose  of  his  in- 
carnation, revealing  it  thus,  according  to  the  evan- 
gelist Matthew,  "that  it  might  be  fulfilled  which 
was  spoken  by  the  prophet ;  I  will  open  my  mouth 
in  parables;  I  WILL  UTTER  THINGS  WHICH 
HAVE  BEEN  KEPT  SECRET  FROM  THE 
FOUNDATION  OF  THE  WORLD."  "He 
taught  them  many  things  by  parables"  says  one 
evangelist,  and  "without  a  parable",  says  another, 
"spake  he  not  unto  them". 

This  manner  of  teaching  was  a  favorite  one  with 
our  Lord,  whereby  he  availed  himself  of  that  dra- 
matic instinct  which  is  common  to  humanity,  (more 
common,  perhaps,  to  the  unlearned  than  to  the 
learned),  to  make  his  teaching  effective  and  easy 
of  remembrance.  The  parables  of  our  Lord  are  all 
strikingly  dramatic.  They  are  full  of  action.  In 
a  few  brief  sentences  are  sketched  a  whole  history, 
as  in  the  one  we  are  now  considering. 

In  this  parable  the  characters  are  the  Lord  of 
the  Vineyard,  his  servants,  his  son  and  the  husband- 
men to  whom  the  vineyard  was  let  out.  The  scene 
is  the  vineyard.  The  period  embraces  several  sea- 
sons. In  the  interpretation  the  Lord  of  the  Vine- 
yard is  our  heavenly  Father,  whose  exhaustless  pa- 
tience, enduring  love  and  long  suffering  nature  are 
vividly  set  forth.  The  servants  are  his  Holy 
Prophets,  the  Son  is  none  other  than  the  Lord 
Jesus  himself.  The  husbandmen  are  the  men  of 
Judah,  the  Jewish  nation,  and  the  vineyard  is  Judea. 
The  period  covers  twenty  centuries.  In  the  story 
there  is  a  veritable  history,  a  prophecy  and  a  brief 

20 


application  or  moral  indicating  the  consequences  to 
ensue,  should  those  to  whom  the  Son  was  sent  re- 
ject him. 

In  this  parable,  our  Lord  represents  the  Father 
as  saying-,  when  all  other  means  have  failed  to  touch 
the  consciences  of  his  people,  "I  will  send  my  be- 
loved Son ;  IT  MAY  BE  they  will  reverence  him, 
when  they  see  him."  "It  may  be",  said  Ezekiel,  of 
these  same  men  of  Judah,  "It  may  be,  they  will  con- 
sider though  they  be  a  rebellious  house".  But  hav- 
ing less  discernment  than  the  ox  and  the  ass,  they 
did  not  consider,  neither  in  the  days  of  Ezekiel,  nor 
later,  when  the  last  opportunity  for  consideration 
was  offered  them. 

There  is  much  significance  in  the  expression  "It 
may  be"  or  "perhaps".  If  it  has  not  the  meaning 
it  seems  to  have,  it  is  not  needed.  It  is  an  unusual 
redundancy  on  our  Lord's  part,  or  it  must  be  taken 
literally.  So  construed,  it  contradicts  very  em- 
phatically the  generally  received  view  that  the 
Father's  purpose  in  sending  his  well  beloved  Son 
to  visit  his  people  was  that  he  might  undergo 
humiliation  and  suffer  a  cruel  death  at  the  hands 
of  those  who  had  so  shamefully  treated  his  other 
messengers,  the  prophets.  Rather  than  this,  it  indi- 
cates a  confidence  in  his  people  so  great,  that  in 
spite  of  their  centuries  of  obstinacy  and  rebellion, 
he  was  unwilling  to  believe  them  capable  of  such 
extremity  of  wickedness  as  they  afterwards  actually 
manifested :  "when  they  see  him  they  will  reverence 
him"  was  a  more  natural  anticipation  for  the  Father 
of  such  a  Son  than  "when  they  see  him  they  will 
put  him  to  death". 

21 


That  the  incarnation  of  the  Son  of  God  was  pre- 
destined from  the  beginning  of  the  world  for  the  ex- 
altation and  everlasting  benefit  of  the  human  race  is 
a  most  comforting  fact  to  be  assured  of ;  but  if  it  be 
true  that  the  crucifixion  was  also  predestined  for 
man's  benefit,  then  there  would  seem  to  be  plausi- 
bility in  the  idea  that  that  event  which  we  are  told 
is  responsible  for  the  crucifixion,  the  so-called 
FALL  OF  MAN,  must  also  have  been  predestined. 
Such  a  conclusion,  be  it  reverently  said,  partakes 
somewhat  of  the  nature  of  a  reductio  ad  absurdam. 

The  purposes  of  God  are  ends,  not  means,  and 
we  may  be  assured  that  the  purposes  of  God  will 
never  fail,  however  the  means  for  consummating 
them  may  be  changed  or  thwarted.  Of  this,  the 
instances  are  innumerable. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

SACRIFICE    AND    OFFERING    THOU    DIDST    NOT 
REQUIRE/'  Ps.    Xl,    6. 


there  are  in  the  Old  Testament  prophecies 
which  point  to  the  crucifixion,  death  and 
resurrection  of  our  Lord,  is  not  to  be  disputed ;  but 
the  purpose  a  prophecy  is  intended  to  serve  must 
be  understood  before  it  can  be  interpreted  with 
certainty.  The  purposes  of  prophecy  are  several 
but  we  have  only  to  deal  with  two  of  them.  One 
purpose  is  to  predict  an  event  as  a  threat  or  warn- 
ing; that  of  Jonah  predicting  the  destruction  of 
Nineveh  is  a  well  known  instance,  and  in  this  case 
we  know  that,  the  warning  being  heeded,  the 
prophecy  was  not  fulfilled  and  Nineveh  was  spared. 
Another  purpose  of  prophecy  is  to  identify  the  sub- 
ject with  the  prediction  after  fulfilment.  The 
prophecy  is  then  as  "a  light  that  shineth  in  a  dark 
place  until  the  day  dawn" — the  day  of  fulfilment. 
The  prophecy  concerning  our  Lord's  entry  into 
Jerusalem,  sitting  on  an  ass's  colt,  we  are  told 
"understood  not  his  disciples  at  first;  but  when 
Jesus  was  glorified  then  remembered  they  that 
these  things  were  written  of  him."  Written  of  him 
500  years  before.  Prophecies  of  this  character  are 
dark  sayings,  indeed,  at  the  time  of  their  first  utter- 

23 


ance,  and  remain  so  till  the  light  of  fulfilment 
makes  their  meaning  clear.  This  light  it  is  which 
has  made  the  prophecies  referring  to  our  Lord's 
sufferings  stand  out  in  such  relief.  The  dark  saying 
or  riddle  and  its  interpretation,  the  prophecy  and 
the  historical  fact,  come  to  us  together,  and  we 
have  no  need  to  call  for  Chaldean  or  soothsayer 
to  decipher  the  otherwise  unintelligible  writing.  But 
it  does  not  follow  of  necessity  that  our  Lord's 
death  had  to  accord  with  these  prophecies.  These 
might,  under  different  circumstances,  have  been 
left  in  company  with  other  still  dark  sayings,  had 
a  happier  ending  attended  his  life  on  earth.  The 
predictions  of  our  Lord's  sufferings  evidently  were 
not  intended  to  point  him  out  to  his  contemporaries 
as  the  Messiah,  nor  to  indicate  a  course  of  action 
for  his  enemies  to  follow  but  they  were  intended 
to  identify  him  as  the  subject  of  the  predictions  in 
the  event  of  their  subsequent  fulfilment.  The 
prophecies  by  which  the  Messiah  was  to  be  recog- 
nized, were  unmistakable  and  admit  of  but  one  in- 
terpretation. "Go  and  show  John  again  those 
things  which  ye  do  hear  and  see"  said  Jesus  "the 
blind  receive  their  sight,  and  the  lame  walk,  the 
lepers  are  cleansed  and  the  deaf  hear,  the  dead 
are  raised  up  and  the  poor  have  the  Gospel  preached 
unto  them".  These  were  the  characteristics  by 
which  the  finger  of  prophecy  pointed  to  the  Mes- 
siah 700  years  before  the  time  of  his  coming,  and 
we  can  readily  understand  how  their  citation  by 
our  Lord  convinced  the  Baptist  that  Jesus  was  in- 
deed the  Christ,  the  long  expected  one,  and  that 
there  was  no  need  to  look  for  another. 

24 


May  we  not  believe  that  different  circumstances 
might  have  made  it  possible  for  the  prophecy  of 
Isaiah,  unhappily  fulfilled,  "He  is  despised  and  re- 
jected", to  have  remained  a  dark  saying  forever? 
and  in  place  of  it  we  might  now  read,  understand- 
ingly,  the  unfulfilled  prophecy, 

"And  it  shall  be  said  in  that  day, 
Lo,  this  is  our  God ! 

We  have  waited  for  him  and  he  will  save  us : 
This  is  the  Lord ! 

We  have  waited  for  him,  we  will  be  glad  and  re- 
joice in  his   SALVATION." 

Isaiah  had  a  vision  of  the  Lord  in  the  temple 
very  unlike  anything  that  ever  took  place  in  reality, 
and  Haggai  prophesied  that  the  glory  of  the  temple 
to  which  the  Messiah  should  come  should  exceed 
the  glory  of  that  former  house  which,  we  know  was 
glorified  by  a  visible  manifestation  of  the  divine 
presence.  "I  will  fill  this  house  with  glory  saith 
the  Lord  of  Hosts  *  *  *  *  and  in  this  place 
will  I  give  peace".  No  temple  made  with  hands 
was  ever  so  glorified  as  the  temple  of  Herod,  trod- 
den by  the  blessed  feet  of  the  Lord  Jesus,  but  his 
visitation  without  recognition  and  honored  only  by 
the  Hosannas  of  a  street  crowd  who  a  few  days 
after  were  to  clamor  for  his  death,  scarcely  fulfils 
the  prophecy,  while  the  later  total  destruction  of 
the  temple  makes  its  future  fulfilment  impossible. 
The  call : 

"Lift  up  your  heads  O  ye  gates !" 

that  the  King  of  Glory  may  come  in  was   never 
answered. 

25 


"In  that  day"  does  not  mean  in  any  other  day, 
but  that  day  of  visitation  when  the  MESSENGER 
of  the  COVENANT  should  come  to  his  holy  tem- 
ple, to  "my  house",  as  our  Lord  called  it.  Like- 
wise, when  Jeremiah  foretold  the  terms  of  the  new 
covenant,  it  was  to  be  with  the  house  of  Israel  and 
the  house  of  Judah  and  by  no  license  can  it  be 
assumed  that  the  prophet  referred  to  the  Gentile 
world. 

As  quoted  by  the  writer  of  the  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews,  the  words  of  the  prophecy  are  these: 

"Behold  the  days  come  saith  the  Lord  that  I 
will  make  a  NEW  COVENANT  with  the  house  of 
Israel  and  with  the  house  of  Judah,  not  according 
to  the  covenant  that  I  made  with  their  fathers  in 
the  day  that  I  took  them  by  the  hand  to  bring  them 
out  of  the  land  of  Egypt;  *  *  *  but  this  shall 
be  the  covenant  that  I  will  make  with  the  house  of 
Israel;  After  those  days  *  *  I  will  put  my  law 
in  their  inward  parts  and  write  it  in  their  hearts 
and  will  be  their  God,  and  they  shall  be  my  people : 
*  *  *  for  I  will  forgive  their  iniquity  and  I  will 
remember  their  sins  no  more." 

With  no  house  of  Israel,  no  house  of  Judah, 
with  a  people  who  once  were  the  people  of  God, 
but  now  are  not  his  people,  how  can  this  prophecy 
be  explained  otherwise  than  as  referring  to  a  con- 
dition which  might  have  been,  had  those  for  whose 
benefit  it  was  written  known  the  time  of  their 
visitation?  The  new  covenant  was  to  be  made  with 
the  house  of  Israel,  and  the  promise  was  not  by 
its  terms  transferable.  If  a  people  other  than 
the  house  of  Israel  or  the  men  of  Judah  ultimately 

26 


enjoyed  the  fulfilment  of  the  promise,  it  must 
have  been  in  the  character  of  those  "other  husband- 
men" of  the  parable,  to  whom  the  vineyard  was  to 
be  transferred  if  the  original  tenants  by  putting  to 
death  the  WELL  BELOVED  SON  of  the  owner 
showed  their  unworthiness  to  be  continued  longer 
in  possession. 

If  the  promise  had  been  fulfilled  in  accordance 
with  the  prophecy  of  Jeremiah,  and  not  in  accord- 
ance with  the  parable  of  our  Lord,  Jerusalem  might 
not  have  become  a  heap  of  stones,  and  the  Jews 
might  have  been  spared  the  reproof  of  being  "a 
proverb  and  a  by-word  among  all  people",  and,  in- 
stead of  its  present  deserts,  the  land  of  Israel 
might  "be  a  delightsome  land"  blossoming  and 
flourishing  as  the  rose,  with  its  fields  bringing  forth 
fruit  abundantly,  sometimes  thirty  and  sometimes 
sixty  and  sometimes  a  hundred  fold ;  but  with  the 
terrible  punishment  inflicted  upon  them  by  Titus, 
when  their  holy  city  was  blotted  out  and  their  exist- 
ence as  a  nation  was  finally  destroyed  some  thirty- 
seven  years  after  their  crucifixion  of  the  Son  of 
God,  it  cannot  be  said  that  the  Lord  forgave  the 
iniquity  of  his  people  and  remembered  their  sins 
no  more.  We  can  only  interpret  the  prophecy  of 
Jeremiah  by  the  light  of  the  prophecy  contained  in 
the  parable  that  the  Lord  of  the  vineyard  would 
come  in  vengeance  and  terribly  punish  the  house 
of  Israel  and  the  men  of  Judah,  taking  away  the 
Kingdom  of  God  from  them  and  giving  it  to  an- 
other people. 

It   would   not   have   been    Godlike    to   make   a 
promise  with  no  intention  of  fulfilling  it,  or  to  ac- 

27 


company  it  with  conditions  which  it  was  impossible 
for  those  to  whom  it  was  made  to  fulfil.  The  con- 
ditions of  the  promise  we  must  understand  were 
capable  of  fulfilment;  they  were  not  fulfilled  and 
the  terrible  consequences  predicted  ensued.  For 
what  purpose,  may  we  ask,  did  the  Lord  rise  up 
early  and  send  his  servants,  the  prophets,  to  warn 
his  people,  if  attention  to  the  warnings  could  not 
change  a  predetermined  purpose?  If  his  people 
had  heeded  these  warnings,  would  they  still  have 
been  punished?  There  is  only  one  reasonable 
answer. 

Malachi  prophesied  that  when  the  Messenger 
should  come  to  his  temple,  he  should  purify  the 
sons  of  Levi,  that  is  the  Jewish  priesthood,  that 
they  might  offer  an  offering  in  righteousness,  an 
offering  that  should  be  pleasant  unto  the  Lord.  Is 
it  reasonable  to  believe  that  the  body  of  his  be- 
loved SON,  subjected  to  gross  indignity  and  nailed 
to  the  cross,  was  such  an  offering?  If  we  judge 
by  our  Lord's  denunciations  of  them,  the  Sons  of 
Levi  refused  to  be  purified. 

Isaiah's  prophecy  of  the  coming  of  our  Lord 
commences  with  a  message  of  comfort  to  Jerusa- 
lem that  her  iniquity  is  pardoned.  But  her  iniquity 
was  not  pardoned,  for  the  reason  that  when  he  who 
had  the  pardon  in  his  hand  "came  unto  his  own, 
his  own  received  him  not".  The  wicked  husband- 
men said  "This  is  the  heir,  Come  let  us  kill  him". 
"The  base  Judean  threw  a  pearl  away  richer  than 
all  his  tribe". 


CHAPTER  V. 

"BEHOLD  THY  KING  COMETH". 

Zechariah  ix,   9. 

HP  HE  idea  of  the  Messiah  prevailing  among  the 
Jews  immediately  before,  and  during,  our 
Lord's  visitation,  and  indeed  among  his  own  dis- 
ciples, was  that  he  should  not  only  be  a  Saviour 
who  should  save  them  from  their  sins,  but  their 
temporal  deliverer;  a  deliverer  from  the  rule  of 
the  hated  usurper  then  sitting  upon  the  throne  of 
David,  and  from  the  yoke  of  their  heathen  masters, 
a  king 

"Higher  than  the  kings  of  the  earth", 

who  should  personally  reign  over  them  and  raise 
their  nation  to  an  eminence  of  glory  and  power 
beyond  anything  that  had  ever  preceded  it.  When 
the  wise  men,  led  by  a  star,  reached  Bethlehem, 
their  inquiry  was  ;'Where  is  he  that  is  born  King 
of  the  Jews  ?"  The  promise  of  the  angel  Gabriel 
to  the  mother  of  our  Lord  was  that  God  would 
give  unto  him  the  throne  of  his  father  David; 
"Rabbi"  said  Nathanael  "thou  art  the  Son  of  God; 
thou  art  the  King  of  Israel"  and  when  Zacharias, 
moved  by  the  Holy  Spirit,  prophesied  concerning 
the  mission  of  John,  the  tenor  of  his  prophecy 
was  that  he,  John,  should  go  before  and  prepare  the 
way  of  One  of  the  house  of  David,  who  should 

29 


save  the  people  from  their  enemies  and  those  that 
hated  them,  that  they  might  serve  God  without 
fear,  in  holiness  and  righteousness  all  the  days  of 
their  life.  Although  a  spiritual  meaning  for  these 
words  is  possible,  their  literal  meaning  was  the 
more  obvious.  It  was  the  earthly  enemies  of  Israel 
of  whom  Zacharias  was  thinking  and  who  must 
have  been  uppermost  in  the  minds  of  those  who 
heard  him. 

The  prophets  had  declared  that  Jerusalem  was 
to  be  a  dwelling  place  for  the  great  king.  Zechariah 
had  the  word  of  the  Lord  for  it  and  the  city  was 
to  be  called  the  City  of  TRUTH :  Lo,  I  come  and 
I  will  dwell  in  the  midst  of  thee  saith  the  Lord 
and  he  who  toucheth  you  toucheth  the  apple  of 
mine  eye.  Jerusalem  was  to  be  as  a  city  not  needing 
walls  for  its  defence,  for  the  Lord  was  to  be  unto 
her  a  wall  of  fire  round  about  and  the  glory  in  the 
midst  of  her.  Swear  not  by  Jerusalem,  said  Jesus, 
for  it  is  the  city  of  the  great  KING.  What  King? 
Surely  not  Herod !  Not  David,  for  in  his  days 
the  city  did  not  even  boast  of  a  house  of  God ;  not 
Solomon,  for  a  greater  than  Solomon  was  speak- 
ing. No  words  could  be  more  explicit  than  those 
of  Jeremiah  wherein  he  says : 

"Behold  the  days  come,  saith  the  Lord 
That  I  will  raise  unto  David  a  righteous  Branch, 
And  a  KING  shall  reign  and  prosper, 
And   shall   execute  judgment  and   justice  in  the 

earth. 

In  his  days  Judah  shall  be  saved, 
And  Israel  shall  dwell  safely." 

30 


Have  these  words  any  meaning? 
Micah,    who   prophesied    concerning   the   birth- 
place of  our  Lord,  said : 

"Out  of  thee  will  come  forth  for  me 
One  who  is  to  become  ruler  in  Israel." 

"In  that  day"  many  nations  were  to  be  joined 
to  the  Lord :  "It  shall  come  to  pass"  said  Jere- 
miah "when  ye  be  multiplied  *  *  *  that 
they  shall  call  Jerusalem  the  throne  of  the  Lord 
and  all  the  nations  shall  be  gathered  unto  it" ;  es- 
pecially, Egypt  and  Assyria  were  to  be  as  one 
people  with  Israel.  "My  house  shall  be  called  an 
house  of  prayer  for  all  nations"  quoted  our  Lord 
from  Isaiah.  The  Psalms  are  filled  with  predic- 
tions of  like  import.  The  Lord  had  sworn  unto 
David  that  of  the  fruit  of  his  body,  no  interloper 
or  usurper,  but  one  of  the  household  and  lineage 
of  David,  should  sit  upon  his  throne,  for  the  Lord 
had  desired  Jerusalem  for  his  habitation :  her  poor 
were  to  be  satisfied  with,  bread  and  her  priests 
"clothed  with  SALVATION".  But  this  promise, 
like  all  the  others,  was  conditional.  There  was  a 
terrible  "if".  "If  thy  children  will  keep  my  cove- 
nant" were  the  terms  upon  which  the  promises 
were  conditioned. 

"Oh  that  thou  hadst  hearkened  to  my  command- 
ments ! 

Then  had  thy  peace  been  as  a  river, 
And  thy  righteousness  as  the  waves  of  the  sea :  *  * 
HIS    NAME    SHOULD    NOT    HAVE    BEEN 
CUT  OFF  NOR  DESTROYED  FROM  BE- 
FORE ME." 

31 


These  few  citations  show  that  there  were,  run- 
ning through  the  Old  Testament,  two  parallel 
streams  of  prophecy,  one  indicating  the  establish- 
ment by  the  Messiah  of  a  kingdom  of  great  glory 
of  which  Jerusalem  was  to  be  the  centre  and  him- 
self the  head,  and  the  other  indicating  an  igno- 
minious and  shameful  termination  of  his  work. 

To  fulfil  these  predictions,  the  Jew  argues  that 
two  Messiahs  are  needed,  one  to  suffer  and  one  to 
reign,  and  the  Christian  tries  to  explain  a  seeming 
paradox  by  postponing  the  fulfilment  of  the  first 
mentioned  class  of  prophecies  to  a  later  day ;  to 
the  second  coming  of  the  same  Messiah.  Both  ex- 
planations overlook  the  important  fact  that  those 
prophecies  which  refer  to  the  Jewish  city  of  Jerusa- 
lem, to  a  Jewish  kingdom  and  nation,  to  the  Jewish 
priesthood  and  to  the  temple  at  Jerusalem,  can 
never  be  fulfilled,  for  the  reason  that  the  subjects 
of  them  have  disappeared  forever.  The  pious  He- 
brew, year  after  year,  as  often  as  the  sacred  Day 
of  Atonement  comes  round,  laments  this  fact  and 
says  "But  now  O  Lord  our  God !  the  sanctuary  is 
destroyed,  the  service  has  ceased ;  we  have  no 
more  a  leader  as  in  former  days,  no  high  priest  to 
bring  offerings,  no  altar  for  sacrifices."  This  but 
paraphrases  a  part  of  the  74th  Psalm :  "O  God 
wherefore  art  thou  absent  from  us  so  long?  Why 
is  thy  wrath  so  hot  against  the  sheep  of  thy  pas- 
ture? We  see  not  our  tokens;  there  is  not  one 
prophet  more ;  no,  not  one  is  there  among  us  that 
understandcth  any  more." 

We  may  call  Jesus  of  Nazareth  our  King,  if  we 
will,  as  long  as  we  are  his  loyal  subjects  and  fight 

32 


under  his  banner,  but  that  does  not  constitute  him 
the  enthroned  successor  of  David  who  never  was 
king  of  ours.  The  heathen  Roman,  who  sat  in 
judgment  upon  him,  whether  by  inspiration  or 
otherwise,  we  know  not,  recognized  the  legitimacy 
of  Jesus  when  he  caused  the  title  of  accusation 
placed  upon  his  cross  to  read:  'THIS  IS  JESUS 
THE  KING  of  the  JEWS".  "Write  not,"  said 
the  chief  priests,  'The  King  of  the  Jews,  but  that  he 
said,  I  am  King  of  the  Jews,"  and  Pilate  answered 
"What  I  have  written  I  have  written".  And  this 
title  was  inscribed  in  Hebrew,  in  Greek  and  in 
Latin.  All  of  these  languages  are  now  called  dead 
languages,  languages  spoken  by  no  nation  on  earth, 
but  the  words  of  Pilate  will  nevertheless  live  to  the 
end  of  the  ages,  a  perpetual  reminder  of  the  king- 
ship of  Jesus. 

A  reasonable  solution  of  the  difficulty  which 
the  two  streams  of  prophecy  appear  to  raise  is,  that 
one  was  adapted  to  the  acceptance  of  Jesus  by  the 
Jewish  nation  as  their  King  and  Saviour  and  the 
other  to  their  rejection  of  him,  one  of  which 
courses  of  action  being  adopted,  the  prophecies 
referring  to  the  opposite  course  necessarily  became 
void  and  of  no  effect. 

If  this  view  is  not  immediately  admitted  from 
prima  facie  evidence,  then  to  strengthen  the  case, 
we  must  fall  back  upon  the  fact  of  the  conditional 
nature  of  all  the  Old  Testament  promises.  Among 
these,  those  threatening  direful  consequences 
against  a  nation  were  to  be  withdrawn  in  case  they 
were  undeserved,  and  blessings  promised  were  to 
be  withheld  if  those  to  whom  the  promise  was 

33 


given  proved  unworthy  to  receive  them.  By  the 
mouth  of  Jeremiah  God  said: 

"At  what  instant  I  shall  speak  concerning  a  king- 
dom, 

To  pluck,  and  to  pull  down,  and  to  destroy  it : 
If  that  nation  against  whom  I  have  pronounced 

turn   from  their  evil, 
I  will  repent  of  the  evil  that  I  thought  to  do  unto 

them. 
And  at  what  instant  I  shall  speak  concerning  a 

nation 

And  concerning  a  kingdom,  to  build  and  plant  it: 
If  it  do  evil  in  my  sight  that  it  obey  not  my  voice, 
Then  I  will  repent  of  the  good  wherewith  I  said 
I  would  benefit  them". 

Elsewhere  he  says  "Behold  I  will  bring  upon  Judah 
and  all  the  inhabitants  of  Jerusalem  all  the  evil 
that  I  have  pronounced  against  them."  For  what 
reason?  Because  it  was  so  ordained?  That  is  not 
the  answer  of  the  prophet  to  the  question;  he  says 
"Because  I  have  spoken  unto  them ;  but  they  have 
not  heard;  and  I  have  called  unto  them  but  they 
have  not  answered."  But  for  the  pleading  of  Moses 
it  should  be  remembered  the  Lord,  when  he  saw  the 
idolatry  in  the  wilderness,  would  have  nullified  even 
the  promises  to  Abraham. 

Somewhat  analogous  to  the  conditional  inter- 
pretation of  the  written  prophecies,  is  the  acted 
prophecy  of  Abraham  offering  up  on  the  altar  on 
Mount  Moriah,  possibly  the  very  place  where  Jesus 
suffered  later,  his  only  son.  In  that  case,  we  know, 
that  at  the  moment  when  the  knife  was  raised  to 

34 


slay,  a  way  was  found  for  the  deliverance  of  the 
intended  victim.  Now  it  must  be  evident  that  any- 
one knowing  the  circumstances  of  Isaac's  case  and 
knowing  moreover  that  they  prefigured  in  a  very 
remarkable  manner  an  event  to  come,  would  at  any 
time,  before  the  coming  to  pass  of  the  event  pre- 
figured, have  drawn  a  conclusion  as  to  the  manner 
in  which  the  earthly  career  of  the  chief  actor  in 
the  drama  would  end,  very  different  from  that 
which  actually  took  place.  In  this  instance,  the 
acted  prophecy  or  parable  would  have  been  equally 
available  as  a  prophecy,  if  our  Lord  had  been  spared 
the  cup  of  extreme  sorrow,  instead  of  being  com- 
pelled to  drink  it.  As  it  stands,  it  shows  that  God 
did  not  desire  human  sacrifice.  "I  will  have  mercy 
and  not  sacrifice"  he  said.  But  as  the  Lord  Jesus 
pointed  out,  more  than  once,  the  Jews  did  not 
understand  the  meaning  of  these  words.  Had  they 
done  so,  there  might  not  have  been  such  a  manifest 
difference  between  God's  treatment  of  the  Son  of 
Abraham  and  the  treatment  which  the  descendents 
of  Abraham  meted  out  to  the  Son  of  God.  "If  ye 
had  known  what  this  means  'I  will  have  mercy  and 
not  sacrifice'"  said  Jesus  "YE  WOULD  NOT 
HAVE  CONDEMNED  THE  GUILTLESS." 

The  averted  sacrifice  of  Isaac  proved  Abraham's 
faith.  The  sacrifice  of  Jesus  proved  God's  love. 
Greater  love  hath  no  man  than  this,  that  he  lay 
down  his  life  for  his  friend,  if  necessary.  The 
words  "if  necessary"  are  not  in  the  text;  but  they 
must  be  understood.  The  sacrifice  of  Jesus,  the 
Christ,  the  Son  of  God,  was  necessary,  not  because 
it  had  been  predestined  or  foreordained  for  ages, 

35 


but  because  of  the  hatred  of  the  Jews,  a  hatred 
born  of  the  intolerance  which  orthodox  error  ever 
has  for  heterodox  truth.  They  would  have  it  so. 
Away  with  him !  Away  with  him !  Crucify  him ! 
they  cried,  and  when  remonstrated  with  by  a  Gen- 
tile, "they  cried  out  the  more  Let  him  be  crucified." 

It  may  not  have  much  significance,  but  it  is 
worthy  of  note,  that  the  scapegoat,  which  figured 
so  prominently  in  the  ceremonies  of  the  Day  of 
Atonement,  that  greatest  of  all  days  in  the  Jewish 
Church,  which  bore,  symbolically,  the  sins  of  the 
whole  nation  upon  his  head,  was  not  slain,  although 
both  priest  and  altar  were  at  hand. 

If  there  was  no  alternative  to  the  crucifixion, 
with  what  sort  of  understanding  can  we  contem- 
plate our  Lord's  tears  for  Jerusalem  and  his  lamen- 
tations for  the  fate  of  the  city  he  loved.  "O 
Jerusalem,  Jerusalem,  thou  that  killest  the  prophets 
and  stonest  them  that  are  sent  unto  thee,  how  often 
would  I  have  gathered  thy  children  together  even 
as  a  hen  gathereth  her  chickens  under  her  wings 
and  ye  would  not".  "O  that  thou  hadst  but  known 
in  this  thy  day  the  things  which  are  for  thy  peace ! 
but  now  they  are  hid  from  thine  eyes  * 
because  thou  knewest  not  the  time  of  thy  visitation." 
If  it  was  decreed  by  the  Father  that  they  should 
crucify  the  Son  when  he  came  to  claim  the  tribute 
so  long  withheld;  if  they  had  no  will  of  their  own, 
no  option  or  choice  but  to  do  the  shameful  deed, 
then  it  would  seem  that  the  actors  in  it  should  be 
relieved  from  the  odium  attaching  to  the  dreadful 
and  unparalleled  crime  which  they  were  foreor- 
dained to  commit.  If  the  tragedy  of  the  cross 

36 


was  a  performance  the  plot  of  which  had  been 
constructed  ages  before,  then  must  the  actors  in 
it  have  had  their  several  parts  prepared  for  them. 
Should  we  not,  then,  if  such  were  the  case,  instead 
of  calling  them  murderers,  call  them  executioners? 
This  is  an  awful  question  to  answer,  but  the  affirma- 
tive position  taken  seems  to  justify  it.  Further- 
more, if  the  position  taken  be  correct,  how  is  it 
possible  to  understand  the  tone  of  disappointment 
in  Isaiah's  lamentation : 

"What  could  have  been  done  more  to  my  vineyard 
That  I  have  not  done  in  it? 
Wherefore   when   I   looked   that   it   should  bring 

forth  grapes, 
Brought  it  forth  wild  grapes?" 

"The  Lord  of  Hosts  looked  for  righteousness,  but 
behold  a  cry !"  Does  this  suggest  an  unalterable 
decree?  "Knowest  thou  not"  said  Pilate  "that  I 
have  power  to  crucify  thee  and  have  power  to  re- 
lease thee."  Jesus,  in  replying,  denied  not  but  said 
"Thou  couldest  have  no  power  at  all  against  me 
except  it  were  given  thee  from  above."  Would  our 
Saviour  have  prayed  "Father,  forgive  them",  if 
those  for  whom  he  prayed  had  been  the  selected 
instruments  of  the  Father  and  dependent  upon  him 
for  praise  or  blame?  Would  he  have  prayed  on 
the  eve  of  the  crucifixion  "If  it  be  possible  let  this 
cup  pass  from  me",  if  he  had  known  that  it  was 
not  possible,  and  would  the  prophet  have  put  into 
his  mouth  the  words  "Behold  and  see  if  there  be 
any  sorrow  like  unto  my  sorrow",  if  he  was  obedi- 
ently performing  an  agreed-upon  act  and  all  that 

37 


was  happening  was  part  of  a  long  predestined  and 
unalterable  scheme? 

To  foreknow  is  one  thing;  to  foreordain  is  an- 
other, and  to  foretell  or  predict  an  event  is  not 
necessarily  to  foreordain  it,  or  cause  it  to  come  to 
pass.  When  a  seed  is  planted  in  the  ground  it  is 
beyond  human  ability  to  foretell  positively  what 
the  immediate  result  will  be ;  but  it  can  only  be  one 
of  two  things,  the  seed  will  either  germinate  or  it 
will  not,  but  with  either  result  assumed  or  deter- 
mined it  is  then  an  easy  matter  to  predict  the  further 
consequences.  It  is  not  for  finite  man  to  say  what 
is  or  is  not  possible  to  the  Infinite,  but  may  we 
not  reasonably  ask,  Would  God,  after  giving  man 
unlimited  power  to  do  or  to  refrain  from  doing,  be 
likely  to  predict  with  definiteness  the  acts  of  those 
to  whom  he  had  given  this  power?  If  our  answer 
is  in  the  negative,  we  do  not  by  any  means  throw 
doubt  upon  the  reasonableness  of  God's  act  in  dic- 
tating, for  a  purpose,  to  his  servants  the  prophets, 
the  consequences  of  the  assumed  acts  of  such 
free  agent. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

HOW  SHALL  I  CURSE,   WHOM   GOD  HATH    NOT 

CURSED."  Numbers  xxm,  8. 

may  find  an  answer  to  the  questions  raised 
in  the  last  chapter  in  our  Lord's  own  teach- 
ing; but  before  we  can  make  further  appeal  to  this, 
we  must  give  some  little  attention  to  that  event 
which  it  is  said  made  the  crucifixion  inevitable  and 
brought  death  into  the  world  for  us  all ;  the  diso- 
bedience of  the  reputed  first  created  man  and 
woman.  Our  spiritual  horizon  will  not  be  clear,  so 
long  as  there  is  a  haze  in  our  minds  concerning 
this. 

If  the  earlier  event  in  any  way  made  the  later 
one  necessary,  or  corrupted  the  race  of  mankind 
as  reported  there  is  not  the  slightest  recognition  of 
the  fact  in  the  Gospel  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ, 
who  never  in  any  speech  recorded  of  him  men- 
tioned Adam  or  Eve,  or  said  one  word  direct  or 
by  implication  even  mildly  derogatory  of  that  na- 
ture which  he  came  down  from  heaven  expressly  to 
take  upon  himself. 

It  may  make  no  difference  to  our  eternal  well 
being,  the  great  end  of  God's  goodness  and  love, 
whether  the  Lord  Jesus  came  into  this  world  of  ours 
predestined  to  suffer  death  upon  the  cross,  or 

39 


whether  coming  for  a  different  purpose,  cruel  men, 
the  husbandmen  of  the  parable,  condemned  him 
to  death  of  their  own  determination  and  out  of 
their  own  evil  hearts ;  and  seeing  that  physical  death 
is  the  common  end  of  every  created  thing  endowed 
at  any  time  with  life,  we  may  rest  content  to  bear 
our  part  in  the  general  fate,  regardless  of  the  cause, 
except  so  far  as  the  pursuit  of  truth  interests  us; 
but  that  doctrine  which  declares  that  every  new 
minted  Image  of  God  is  representative  of  a  debased 
coinage  and  bears  upon  its  obverse  the  superscrip- 
tion of  Satan,  strikes  at  the  moral  constitution  and 
dignity  of  the  human  race  and  it  must  be  accepted 
or  denied  before  the  incarnation  can  have  a  mean- 
ing for  us. 

It  is  difficult  for  the  ordinary  mind  to  conceive 
of  our  heavenly  Father  sending  his  children  into 
the  world  so  handicapped  in  running  the  race  which 
is  set  before  them,  and  it  is  gratifying  to  reflect  that 
there  is  no  warrant  whatever  in  the  holy  Gospel  of 
our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  to  justify  it.  Actual  ex- 
perience teaches  us  that  it  is  those  only  who  have 
recently  come  into  the  world  who  are  really  capa- 
ble of  knowing  the  full  joy  of  living, 


Ere  doubt,  or  fear,  or  love,  or  act  of  sin, 
Hath  marred  God's  light  within." 


"Of  such"  said  not  our  Lord  is  the  kingdom  of 
Satan,  but  "the  kingdom  of  heaven".  "Woe  unto 
him  who  deceiveth  one  of  these".  "It  is  not  the 
will  of  your  Father  which  is  in  heaven  that  one  of 
these  little  ones  should  perish". 

The  barrier   between   man   and   his   Maker,   is 

40 


raised  by  contact  with  the  world  and  temptation, 
and  to  contemplate  our  Lord  as  one  whose  office 
it  is  to  save  us  from  the  sin  of  an  ancestor  as  re- 
mote and  visionary  as  Adam,  is  to  divert  our  at- 
tention from  the  relation  between  our  personal 
sins  and  our  personal  Saviour.  One  of  the  meanest 
traits  of  our  human  nature,  perhaps,  is  that  which 
seeks  excuse  for  our  own  wrongdoing  by  putting 
the  blame  upon  someone  else,  and  in  this  respect 
at  least  man  to-day  is  very  like  the  Adam  of  the 
Old  Testament,  and  this  doctrine,  the  doctrine  of 
original  sin,  gives  him  an  ever  present  opportunity 
for  the  exercise  of  this  trait  in  his  nature. 

Of  the  titles  bestowed  upon  our  Lord,  the  most 
appropriate  is  JESUS  HOMINUM  SALVATOR; 
Jesus  the  Saviour  of  Men,  not  Salvator  Mundi  or 
Saviour  of  the  World,  for  the  world  is  yet  a  long 
way  from  being  saved,  but  every  individual  in  it 
may  own  the  Lord  Jesus  as  his  own  personal  Sa- 
viour, if  he  so  desires.  A  Saviour  who  not  only 
saves  from  the  consequences  of  sins  committed, 
but  saves  from  the  commission  of  them. 

Sin  generally  is  a  subject  which  must  be  treated 
by  itself :  we  are  now  considering  one  particular 
phase  of  it,  the  so-called  hereditary  or  birth  sin,  and 
for  the  foundation  of  the  doctrine  we  are  referred 
to  the  story  told  in  the  Book  of  Genesis,  that  Book 
of  Beginnings  full  of  allegory  and  metaphor,  sym- 
bolism and  poetry.  Let  us  read  the  story. 

The  story  in  brief  is,  that  God,  in  the  beginning, 
made  man  out  of  the  dust  of  the  earth,  but  in  his 
own  image,  that  he  gave  him  a  commandment  to 
observe,  that  man  under  temptation  disobeyed  the 


divine  commandment  and  for  his  disobedience  he 
was  summarily  judged  and  sentenced.  The  man 
and  his  companion  were  sent  forth  from  the  gar- 
den in  which  God  had  placed  them,  a  curse  was 
put,  not  on  the  man  or  his  wife  or  their  descendents, 
but  only  upon  the  ground  given  him  to  till,  which 
henceforward  was  condemned  to  bring  forth  thorns 
and  thistles  and,  because  of  their  sin,  sorrow  was 
to  be  theirs  all  the  days  of  their  mortal  life. 

From  this  relation  the  conclusion  has  been  drawn 
that  the  first  man,  having  been  created  sinless, 
whatever  that  may  mean,  would  but  for  his  diso- 
bedience have  transmitted  to  his  remotest  posterity 
a  nature  incapable  of  sin  and  the  world  would  have 
remained  indefinitely  in  a  state  of  innocence  and 
virtue;  but  forasmuch  as  he  transgressed  the  com- 
mandment and  became  a  law-breaker  instead  of  a 
law-observer,  he  had  only  a  law-breaker's  nature  to 
transmit,  and  that  he  actually  has  transmitted 
through  uncounted  generations  a  law-breaking  or 
sinful  nature  which  is  borne  by  everyone  that  comes 
into  the  world. 

Now,  this  is  a  most  inexact  conclusion  to  draw 
from  the  story,  as  we  shall  see  if  we  examine  it. 
Adam  sinned,  wilfully  or  not  at  all.  He  must 
have  had  the  power  to  resist  the  temptation  set 
before  him,  or  to  succumb  to  it.  If  he  had  no  such 
power,  then  neither  blame  nor  punishment  should 
have  been  his ;  but  the  fact  of  a  punishment  being 
inflicted  indicates  that  he  had  such  power,  or  that 
reason  and  justice,  which  we  expect  in  divine  judg- 
ments, would  have  been  wanting. 

This  power  then  to  resist  temptation  or  to  suc- 

42 


cumb  to  it,  to  keep  God's  law  or  to  break  it,  being 
a  characteristic  of  the  nature  given  to  Adam  at  first, 
that  same  characteristic  would  necessarily  have 
been  transmitted  to  his  descendents,  and  we  have 
now  to  ask,  by  what  means  were  the  next  and  suc- 
ceeding generations  to  be  protected  from  the  snares 
of  that  "old  serpent  called  the  Devil  and  Satan" 
which  the  first  man  was  unable  to  resist,  and  we 
shall  get  no  answer.  Innocency  was  no  safeguard,  we 
have  learned  from  the  story  of  Adam  himself,  and 
as  with  the  growth  of  the  world  in  age  and  popu- 
lation temptations  would  be  more  likely  to  increase 
than  to  diminish,  we  may  reasonably  expect  that 
sin,  if  not  in  the  very  next  generation,  in  some 
time  to  come,  would  certainly  have  entered  into 
the  world.  If  the  disease  of  Adam  was  to  cling 
so  closely  to  his  descendents,  it  is  somewhat  re- 
markable that  in  the  next  generation,  of  two 
brothers,  one  was  righteous  (our  Lord  called  him 
so)  and  the  other  a  murderer. 

But  whatever  effect  Adam's  transgression  may 
have  had  on  his  immediate  posterity,  an  event  oc- 
curred among  a  later  generation  of  his  descendents 
which  seems  to  have  been  intended  to  put  an  end 
to  the  wickedness  of  the  race.  This  event  was  the 
deluge  or  flood  in  the  days  of  Noah,  the  cause  of 
which  was,  we  are  told,  in  this  same  story  that 
man  had  become  so  bad  and  the  earth  was  so  filled 
with  his  violence  that  it  repented  the  Lord  that  he 
had  made  him  and  the  Lord  said  "I  will  destroy 
man  whom  I  have  created  from  the  face  of  the 
earth."  And  man  was  destroyed,  every  man  "in 
whose  nostrils  was  the  breath  of  life 

43 


died"  and  Noah  only  remained  alive  "with  his  wife 
and  his  sons  and  his  sons'  wives"  and  of  them, 
continues  the  account,  "was  the  whole  earth  over- 
spread." 

Thus,  according  to  this  account,  the  human 
race,  as  at  present  constituted,  derives  its  origin 
not  from  Adam,  but  from  Noah.  It  may  be  said 
that  this  is  begging  the  question  and  that  Noah, 
coming  of  the  line  of  Adam,  necessarily  perpetuated 
the  sinful  strain ;  but  there  was  a  difference :  "Noah 
was  a  just  man  and  perfect"  and  he  "walked  with 
God."  He  was  a  preacher  of  righteousness  and 
presumably  had  a  righteous  family.  Now,  without 
relying  too  much  upon  this  "righteousness",  we 
cannot  read  the  story  of  the  deluge  otherwise  than 
as  the  story  of  an  attempt  on  God's  part  to  es- 
tablish the  human  race  on  a  new  foundation  with 
a  new  head  and  with  the  earth  freed  from  the 
curse  imposed  upon  it  in  the  time  of  Adam.  Jo- 
sephus,  who  wrote  not  very  long  after  our  Saviour's 
time  and  who  was  well  qualified  to  speak  on  any 
matter  of  Jewish  history  or  belief,  speaking  of  this 
event  says  "God  determined  to  destroy  the  whole 
race  of  mankind  and  to  make  another  race  that 
should  be  pure  from  wickedness." 

Now,  according  to  the  book  of  Genesis,  the 
first  part  of  God's  declared  purpose  was  carried 
out.  The  wicked  were  all  destroyed.  After  their 
total  annihilation,  God  blessed  Noah  and  took  the 
curse  from  off  the  earth,  Noah  becoming,  since 
Adam,  the  first  husbandman  tilling  a  God-blessed 
soil.  God  then  made  a  solemn  covenant  with  man 
represented  by  Noah  and  gave  him  commandments 

44 


to  observe;  and  as  he  is  said  to  have  given  him  at 
first,  so  he  gave  him  now,  dominion  over  every  other 
living  creature. 

Thus  began  the  age  of  the  post-diluvian  patri- 
archs. If  this  was  not  a  new  beginning  of  the 
race,  if  only  the  ground  was  freed  from  the  curse 
and  man's  supposed  burden,  inherited  from  Adam, 
still  remained,  it  does  not  appear  from  the  record 
in  the  case  that  there  was  adequate  reason  for,  or 
result  from,  the  Noahchian  deluge. 


CHAPTER  VII. 
"THE  SON  SHALL  NOT  BEAR  THE  INIQUITY  OF 

THE    FATHER/'  Ezek.    XVlU,    20. 

"EVERY    ONE    SHALL    DIE    FOR     HIS    OWN 
INIQUITY/'  Jer.  xxxi,  jo. 

OW,  whether  this  account  we  have  been  review- 
ing of  God's  dealings  with  the  human  race  in 
the  infancy  of  the  world  be  authentic  history,  and 
it  must  always  be  remembered  that  it  professes  to 
relate  events,  the  scene  of  which  and  the  actors 
in  which  and  all  records  of  them,  if  there  were 
any,  had  disappeared  long  ages  before  it  was  writ- 
ten ;  or  whether  it  be  an  inspired  or  human  allegory, 
Christian  doctrines  have  been  built  upon  it  and  it 
cannot  be  disregarded. 

The  account  we  are  speaking  of  ended  with  the 
deluge.  With  the  clearing  away  of  the  waters,  a 
second  period  commenced,  an  era  of  new  oppor- 
tunity for  man  and  of  hopeful  expectation  for  his 
Maker.  But  man  failed  to  profit  by  the  opportunity 
afforded  him  and  the  second  period  came  to  an 
end  under  the  saddest  of  circumstances.  No  im- 
provement apparently  took  place  in  the  race,  and 
post-diluvian  man  proved  no  better  than  his  ante- 
diluvian predecessor ;  he  was,  if  anything,  worse. 


The  trait  of  bad  behavior  which  man  thus  dis- 
played may  have  been  inherited  from  his  fore- 
fathers ;  but  not  necessarily  because  a  remote  an- 
cestor had  disobeyed  a  commandment,  but  rather 
because  he  inherited  from  them,  as  a  glorious  birth- 
right the  same  liberty  of  will !  the  same  power  to 
choose  the  good  and  reject  the  evil;  the  same 
power  to  choose  the  evil  and  reject  the  good:  as 
was  said  later  "I  have  set  before  thee  life  and 
death,  blessing  and  cursing:  therefore  choose!' 
Without  this  gift  man  would  not  be  the  wonderful 
creature  that  he  is ;  he  would  not  be  the  image  of 
God ;  he  would  not  be  the  responsible  being  his 
Maker  intended  him  to  be.  But,  having  it,  and 
evil  ways  being  oftener  than  not  the  readier  means 
to  his  ends,  in  the  absence  of  some  restraining  in- 
fluence it  is  not  remarkable  that  evil  means  were 
more  often  chosen  than  good  ones.  The  formation 
of  character  is  largely  a  matter  of  environment, 
and  the  most  potent  factor  is  no  doubt  heredity. 
The  babe  is  physically  the  image  of  his  sire  and  in 
character,  as  it  develops,  he  resembles  those  who 
have  gone  before  him  but  with  the  modifying  in- 
fluence of  other  environment.  The  Mosaic  Law 
which  limited  the  consequences  of  sin  to  four  gen- 
erations is  sometimes  thought  harsh  and  unreason- 
able, but  what  is  to  be  said  of  a  law  which  would 
fasten  upon  a  present  generation  the  sin  of  an  an- 
cestor hundreds  of  generations  removed?  and  how 
shall  we  reconcile  with  it  the  word  of  the  Lord, 
which  came  to  Ezekiel,  concerning  the  son  of  the 
wicked  who  seeth  all  his  father's  sins  and  con- 
sidereth  and  doeth  not  such  like?  Of  such  it  was 

47 


said  "He  shall  not  die  for  the  iniquity  of  his 
father,  he  shall  surely  live."  It  may  be  affirmed 
with  confidence  that  no  heart,  or  head  or  knee,  was 
ever  yet  bowed  sincerely  from  a  consciousness  of 
bearing  the  weight  of  Adam's  sin  and  the  inflic- 
tion of  it  upon  the  whole  human  race  is  repugnant 
to  reason  and  to  sense. 

The  Lord  Jesus  Christ  was  aborn  of  a  pure 
virgin"  not  that  he  might  escape  the  taint  of  this 
sin;  but  because  he  was  the  Son  of  the  Most  High 
and  a  human  father  was  not  possible  for  him.  The 
virgin  birth  of  our  Lord  would  not  have  saved 
him  from  it,  if  it  had  been  the  real  thing  we  are 
told  it  is,  for  it  could  have  come  to  him  as  well 
through  a  human  mother  as  through  a  human 
father.  This  is  so  obvious  that  to  avoid  a  dilemma 
it  became  necessary  to  invent  another  doctrine :  the 
doctrine  that  the  Blessed  Virgin,  the  mother  of  our 
Lord,  was  herself  born  with  a  nature  different 
from  that  of  other  women. 

A  word  must  now  be  said  concerning  that  ad- 
junct to  the  doctrine  of  inherited  sin  which  de- 
clares that  physical  death  is  also  a  consequence  of 
Adam's  transgression.  If  this  interpretation  of 
the  sentence  passed  upon  Adam  be  insisted  upon, 
it  must  then  be  declared  that  our  Lord  did  not  in 
his  own  person  overcome  what  we  call  death,  for 
he  suffered  it;  neither  did  he  abolish  death  for  the 
rest  of  us,  for  man  is  as  subject  to  it  to-day  as  he 
was  thousands  of  years  ago. 

The  idea  that  bodily  death,  as  something  not 
contemplated  by  God  at  creation,  came  into  the 
world  because  of  Adam's  sin  is  contrary  to  every 


analogy  in  nature  and  little  thought  is  required  to 
convince  anyone,  who  cares  to  think,  that  a  con- 
dition of  eternal  life  on  this  planet  would  be 
utterly  impracticable  as  man  is  constituted.  Our 
Lord  declared  that  man's  final  habitation  was  pre- 
pared for  him  before  the  foundations  of  the  earth 
were  laid  and  therefore  not  on  the  earth,  but  else- 
where. Wherever  that  habitation  may  be,  by  what 
means  can  we  conceive  of  man  entering  into  it  if 
not  through  the  grave  and  gate  of  death? 

But  to  be  more  particular,  we  must  go  again  to 
the  account  given  in  the  Book  of  Genesis.  The 
commandment  given  to  Adam  was  plain  and  ex- 
plicit: Thou  shalt  not  do  such  and  such  a  thing  for 
"in  the  day  thou  doest  it  thou  shalt  surely  die." 
Now  Adam  did  that  which  he  was  expressly  com- 
manded not  to  do,  yet  he  did  not  die  in  the  day  of 
his  transgression,  but  lived  to  see  many  generations 
of  his  descendents.  Evidently,  therefore,  it  was 
not  Adam's  bodily  existence  that  was  threatened 
with  immediate  extinction,  but  something  else.  The 
sentence  was,  and  there  is  nothing  to  show  that  it 
was  unlimited,  "Unto  dust  thou  shalt  return,"  and  it 
meant  that  that  part  of  him  which  was  spiritual 
had  ceased  to  exist.  Adam  had  made  his  choice 
between  obeying  God  and  ministering  to  his  own 
desires,  with  the  result  that  at  his  dissolution  his 
body  was  in  the  order  of  nature  doomed  to  return 
to  the  dust  as  dust,  without  the  hope  of  a  joyful 
resurrection. 

This  is  a  plain  statement  of  the  first  prediction 
of  death;  but  did  the  matter  end  there?  was  there 
no  second  opportunity  given  to  Adam?  It  is  gen- 

49 


eially  consideied  thai  (here  was,  and,  allhouidi  it 
ha1,  nothing  l<»  do  with  our  pie:, ml  purpose,  il 
will  !><•  inlci  <",!  iiii;  to  rein  In  il  In  show  how  little 
difference  Iheie  is  helween  linn  vvlm  died  ycsler 
day  -Hid  llu-  reputed  In  si  <  icalcd  in. in  Adam  was 
nnl  lel'l  loii);  without  hope,  and  a  way  was  provided 
loi  escaphi!;  the  exlicme  penally.  (  iod,  who  willelh 
iml  Ihal  any  man  should  die,  s< »  willed  with  the 
ln\ I  man,  who  aeeoidiiu;  lo  the  story  was  made 
awaie  <>l  the  Saviour  who  later  was  to  enme  mln 
NIC  world,  and  Adam,  who  we  must  conceive  to 
have  known  hy  this  him  whom  l<>  helieve,  helieved 
and  SO,  l>\  lailh,  pre,ei\cd  his  spiritual  existence 
Iroin  desl  i  IK  I  ion.  The  lust  sinner  thus  hecame  the- 
hr, I  saved,  and  the  ;-,ia\c  was  thus  early  rohhed  o| 
victory,  thioiiidi  lailh  in  the  Saviour. 

The  punishment  wilh  which  Adam  was  threat 
cued  and  from  which  he  was  saved  was  death  of 
ihe  soul,  the  same  punishment  wilh  which  the  sinner 
of  today  is  threatened  and  from  which  the  same 
Saviour  saves  him.  'The  soul  thai  sinnelh  it  shall 
die"  said  K/ekicl.  "I'Var  not  them  which  kill  Ihe 
hody"  said  our  Saviour  "hut  are  not  ahle  to  kill 
the  soul.' 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

"i    WILL   GIVE  TIJKK    FOR   A    COVKNANT   OF  THE 
1'KOl'l.K,    FOR    A    LIGHT    "I-'    THE    <  iKNTlLK.s". 

is.  .via,  6. 

TT  was  not  for  any  "constructive"  sin  that  a 
whole  generation  was  destroyed  in  the  days  <»f 
Noah ;  hut  for  its  actual  wickedness.  This  we  are 
plainly  told.  And  it  was  no  "constructive"  sin  of 
which  the  descendents  of  Noah,  when  grown  to  he 
many  nations,  were  guilty ;  but  sin  of  a  very  per- 
sonal and  pronounced  type.  ( lod,  at  this  time, 
was  confronted  with  a  new  condition.  II  y  the 
terms  of  his  covenant  with  Noah,  he  was  debarred 
from  again  destroying  all  flesh  from  off  the  earth, 
and  so  another  method  of  dealing  with  sinful  man 
was  devised. 

With  the  terrible  power  of  choosing  good  or 
choosing  evil,  man  was  left  to  his  own  devices,  and 
God  suffered  him  to  walk  in  his  own  ways.  // 
rvas  at  this  time  then,  and  not  in  the  days  of  Adam, 
that  the  world  became  a  LOST  world,  being  for 
the  first  time  utterly  without  God  and  without  hope. 
Thenceforward  spiritual  darkness  covered  the 
earth  and  gross  darkness  the  people.  'This  was 
as  the  waters  of  Noah  unto  me"  said  the  Lord,  by 

51 


the  mouth  of  Isaiah.  Severe  as  a  punishment  it 
certainly  was  and  as  overwhelming  as  the  flood. 

God  in  this  was  not  unmindful  of  his  covenant ; 
but  man's  contempt  for  it  brought  about  the  es- 
trangement. The  covenant,  however,  was  definitely 
broken,  and  before  it  could  be  reinstated  a  recon- 
ciliation would  have  to  be  made  between  man  and 
his  Maker. 

When  and  in  what  manner  this  reconciliation 
was  to  be  effected  was  known  at  this  time  to  God 
alone ;  but  the  period  for  which  this  estrangement 
was  to  continue  during  which  the  nations  of  the 
earth  were  to  be  left  without  direct  divine  guidance 
or  companionship  was  not,  we  may  reasonably  sup- 
pose, a  certain  number  of  years,  but  a  period  to 
be  determined  by  the  fulfilment  of  certain  condi- 
tions. God  purposed,  however,  that  when  these 
conditions  were  fulfilled,  when  the  fulness  of  time 
should  come,  a  year  that  should  be  ACCEPTABLE 
to  him,  a  WAY  would  be  provided  for  the  restora- 
tion of  the  whole  human  race  to  its  place  in  his 
household  again. 

As  a  first  step  to  the  attainment  of  this  end  he 
chose,  as  he  had  in  the  days  of  Noah,  one  man,  to 
be  the  founder  and  head  of  a  new  race,  a  peculiar 
people,  a  people  whose  high  duty  and  great  privi- 
lege it  was  to  be  to  preserve  in  the  midst  of  the 
darkness,  corruption  and  idolatry  of  surrounding 
nations,  the  knowledge  of  the  ONE  TRUE  GOD. 
With  this  man  God  made,  as  he  had  with  Noah,  a 
solemn  covenant  concerning,  not  one  people  only, 
but  the  whole  human  race.  Among  many  gracious 
promises  in  which  the  whole  world  to-day  is  in- 

52 


terested,  was  one  that  in  this  man's  seed  all  the  na- 
tions of  the  earth  were  to  be  blessed,  a  promise 
which  we  now  know  referred  specifically  to  the  in- 
carnation of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  the  Messenger 
of  the  NEW  COVENANT. 

It  is  not  out  of  place  here  to  draw  attention  to 
the  fact  that  all  of  God's  dispensations  or  methods 
of  dealing  with  his  children  at  different  periods  have 
had  one  characteristic  in  common,  namely  the  se- 
lection of  one  certain  man  to  be  the  head  of  a  new 
race.  Their  names  are:  Adam,  Noah,  Abraham, 
Jesus.  We  have  dealt  with  the  first  two  and  are 
now  dealing  with  Abraham.  This  man,  so  greatly 
honored,  was,  we  may  believe,  a  veritable  person- 
age, whose  descendents,  intermixed  to  a  very  small 
degree  perhaps  with  alien  blood,  are  at  this  day  to 
be  found  in  every  great  city  of  the  world;  living 
witnesses  of  the  truth  of  that  Gospel  they  deny. 
With  this  man  began  the  history  of  that  race  which 
was  destined  to  have  for  two  thousand  years  a 
career  as  wonderful  and  unexampled  as  it  was  ro- 
mantic— a  career  which  is  not  yet  ended.. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  recall  the  wanderings  of 
this  Hebrew  prince  and  his  family,  what  time  they 
"went  to  and  fro  from  nation  to  nation,  from  one 
kingdom  to  another  people";  to  review  the  long 
sojourn  in  the  chrysalis  Egypt,  from  which  his  de- 
scendents, 400  years  afterwards,  emerged  under  the 
leadership  of  Moses  a  nation  of  600,000  grown 
men  with  a  code  of  laws  derived  from  God  himself, 
nor  the  manner  in  which  their  final  settlement  was 
effected  in  the  promised  land;  but  we  must  note 
that  with  the  setting  apart  of  Abraham,  the  founda- 

53 


tion  was  laid  of  a  wall  of  partition  intended  to  di- 
vide the  people  of  the  earth  into  two  distinct 
bodies,  the  Hebrews  constituting  one  and  the  rest 
of  the  world,  afterwards  indifferently  called  Gen- 
tile or  heathen,  the  other. 

It  was  into  a  world  so  divided,  one  part  living 
in  intimate  and  covenant  relationship  with  Al- 
mighty God,  and  the  other  part  ignorant  both  of 
him  and  of  the  gracious  promise  of  which  it  was 
the  subject  that,  some  twenty  centuries  after  the 
promise  was  made,  the  Saviour,  the  promised  one, 
came  "to  be  a  light  to  lighten  the  Gentiles  and  the 
Glory  of  Israel". 


CHAPTER  IX. 

"l    AM    THE   LIGHT    OF   THE   WORLD." 

John  viii,  12. 

nPO  be  a  light  to  lighten  the  Gentiles  and  the 
glory  of  Israel."  In  these  words  the  just 
and  devout  Israelite  who  uttered  them  makes  a  dis- 
tinction between  our  Lord's  relation  to  his  own 
people  and  his  relation  to  the  Gentiles.  The  order 
in  which  these  are  mentioned,  too,  is  significant, 
and  it  can  only  with  difficulty  be  conceived  of  an 
Israelite  observing  such  an  order,  unless  acting 
under  the  direction  of  a  higher  power,  but  it  was 
an  eminently  proper  one,  although  neither  the  aged 
Simeon  himself,  nor  those  who  heard  him,  may 
have  realized  it.  In  order  of  time,  our  Lord's 
Mission  was  first  to  Israel ;  but  in  order  of  impor- 
tance, it  was  undeniably  first  to  the  Gentiles.  "His 
great  work"  was  to  be  the  salvation  of 
mankind,  the  greater  part  of  which  was  Gentile. 
It  was  the  Gentile  world  walking  in  darkness  and 
sitting  in  the  land  of  the  shadow  of  death  upon 
whom  the  great  light  was  to  shine,  and  Israel  was 
designed  to  be  but  little  more  than  a  candlestick  or 
bearer  of  this  light. 

The  work  our  Lord  had  to  do  for  the  Jewish 

55 


nation  was  essentially  different  from  that  which 
the  Gentile  world  needed.  The  Jewish  law,  which 
had  never  been  imposed  upon  the  rest  of  the  world, 
had  to  be  fulfilled  before  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven 
could  be  opened  to  the  Gentiles  who  were  both 
innocent  and  ignorant  of  the  particular  sins  of 
which  the  Jews  were  guilty.  In  the  language  of 
the  market  place,  it  may  be  said,  that  before  a  new 
organization  could  be  formed  on  a  solvent  founda- 
tion, the  obligations  of  the  old  one  had  to  be  dis- 
charged. There  was  no  Spiritual  Bankruptcy  Court 
to  appeal  to ;  but  ONE  there  was,  able  to  give  a  full 
release  for  the  debts  of  the  nation,  as,  indeed,  at 
last,  he  did,  but  at  the  expense  of  the  debtors'  ever- 
lasting shame. 

Moreover,  at  the  time  of  our  Lord's  birth  the 
"expectation"  of  the  Jews  and  the  "desire  of  the  na- 
tions" were  not  the  same.  The  Jews  were  in  ex- 
pectation of  the  advent  of  a  divine  personage  with 
whose  characteristics  and  purposes  they  had  been 
made  acquainted  by  a  line  of  prophets  through 
a  long  series  of  years.  The  desire  of  "the  nations" 
ignorant  of  the  existence  of  the  ONLY  God  and  of 
the  gracious  promise  to  which  they  were  heirs 
showed  a  reaching  out  for  immortality,  but,  with 
no  revelation  to  guide  them,  a  blind  and  unin- 
structed  one.  The  expectation  of  the  Jews  was  true 
HOPE ;  expectancy  and  desire  united ;  the  desire  of 
the  nations  if  we  except  the  faith  of  that  grand  old 
Gentile  Job,  was  characterized  by  a  blank  despair. 

ISRAEL,  always  in  covenant  relationship  with 
God,  had  to  be  redeemed  from  all  his  sins ;  the 
GENTILE  WORLD  to  be  reinstated  in  a  covenant 

56 


relationship  from  which  it  had  been  cut  off  for 
two  thousand  years.  "Blessed  be  the  Lord  God  of 
Israel"  sang  Zacharias  "for  he  hath  visited  and 
redeemed  his  people".  His-  people  were,  of  course, 
the  Jewish  nation  and  none  else.  To  them  knowl- 
edge of  salvation  was  to  be  given  "by  the  remission 
of  their  sins' .  Nothing  is  said  of  the  sins  of  the 
Gentiles ;  but  to  them  the  "dayspring  from  on  high" 
is  promised  for  their  ENLIGHTENMENT.  Said 
the  angel  who  appeared  to  Joseph,  "It  is  he  that 
shall  save  his  people  from  their  sins". 

But  however  it  came  to  the  Gentiles,  salvation 
"was  to  be  by  way  of  the  Jews".  There  were  two 
ways  by  which  it  could  come  to  them.  One  way 
was  by  their  reception  into  an  organization,  pri- 
marily Jewish,  but  designed  to  embrace  both  Jew 
and  Gentile,  ("Rejoice  ye  Gentiles  with  his  people" 
sang  Moses)  and  the  other  was,  as  actually  hap- 
pened, by  their  succeeding  to  the  inheritance  of  the 
Jews,  becoming  sole  instead  of  joint  heirs  to  the 
promise  of  a  new  covenant;  realizing  directly,  in- 
stead of  through  a  secondary  channel,  those 
promises  which  had  been  made  for  their  benefit  to 
the  Gentile  Abram  and  of  which  his  descendents 
may  be  considered  to  have  been  the  trustees.  Now 
whether  it  came  to  them  directly  or  indirectly, 
there  was  but  ONE  messenger  of  the  covenant  and 
his  commission  was  undoubtedly  to  the  Jews,  and 
in  his  ministrations  he  never  lost  sight  of  this  fact! 
Had  our  Lord's  mission  been  to  the  Gentiles,  his 
proper  birthplace  would  have  been  in  Greece  or 
Rome.  If  his  fate  was  to  be  crucified,  the  Greeks 
or  Romans  would  have  been  equal  to  the  necessity. 

57 


Socrates,  400  years  before  the  birth  of  our  Lord, 
said  if  such  a  JUST  person  as  he  described  were 
to  appear  on  earth,  the  people  would  certainly 
crucify  him.  Had  our  Lord  treated  Jew  and  Gen- 
tile alike,  confusion  as  to  the  purpose  of  his  visita- 
tion must  of  necessity  have  ensued;  but  he  did 
not.  "Other  sheep  I  have"  said  he  "which  are  not 
of  this  fold  *  *  they  shall  hear  my  voice".  But 
they  were  not  to  hear  it  then.  To  these  other  sheep 
he  never  went  himself.  When  approached  for  help 
by  a  Gentile  woman,  he  said  "I  WAS  NOT  SENT 
BUT  UNTO  THE  LOST  SHEEP  OF  THE 
HOUSE  OF  ISRAEL."  And,  although  this  was 
said  primarily  to  test  the  woman's  faith,  it  was 
none  the  less  an  important  truth.  When  our  Lord 
sent  forth  the  twelve  disciples,  their  general  in- 
structions were  prefaced  by  the  command  "Go  not 
into  the  way  of  the  Gentiles  and  into  any  city  of 
the  Samaritans  enter  ye  not",  and  later,  when  the 
seventy  were  sent  forth  they  were  likewise  com- 
manded. 

The  sermon  on  the  mount,  like  all  the  other  dis- 
courses of  our  Lord,  was  addressed  to  Jews  and 
was  for  their  instruction.  It  was  an  exposition  of 
the  Jewish  LAW  as  it  was  to  be  construed  under 
the  personal  government  of  the  Messiah,  an  ex- 
position of  the  spirit  of  that  law  which  a  strict 
observance  of  its  letter  had  caused  to  be  obscured 
for  so  long.  This  exposition  was  not  intended 
primarily  for  the  instruction  of  the  members  of  a 
new  organization,  but  was  for  those  belonging  to 
an  already  existing  one  which  our  Lord's  teaching 
was  to  reform  and  purify.  That  prayer,  which  was 

58 


part  of  the  sermon  on  the  mount,  and  which  Chris- 
tians call  the  Lord's  Prayer,  is  also  essentially 
Jewish  and  lacks  the  prime  essential  of  a  Christian 
prayer. 

The  full  meaning  of  the  teaching  from  the 
Mount  of  the  BEATITUDES  could  not  have  been 
understood  by  those  to  whom  the  teaching  from 
the  Mount  of  the  LAW  was  unknown ;  nor  was  it 
necessary  that  it  should  be.  The  gospel  or  "good 
news"  the  Gentiles  were  to  hear  by  the  mouth  of 
the  first  apostles  was  the  same  nineteen  hundred 
years  ago  as  that  with  which  the  Christian  mission- 
ary of  to-day  is  charged :  the  proclamation  "By 
Authority"  of  the  IMMORTALIZATION  of  the 
HUMAN  RACE.  Charged  with  a  message  like 
this,  it  was  not  necessary  then,  nor  is  it  necessary 
now,  to  mention  the  Law,  which  had  been  abolished, 
nor  the  prophets,  of  whom  the  Gentiles  knew  little, 
nor  redemption  and  ransom,  of  which  they  knew 
less. 

But  before  we  can  understand  Christianity  it  is 
essential  that  we  realize  the  difference  between  our 
Lord's  work  for  his  people  that  were  and  for  his 
people  that  were  to  be.  "When  thou  hadst  over- 
come the  sharpness  of  death"  sang  Ambrose  "thou 
didst  open  the  kingdom  of  heaven  to  all  believers". 

It  must  be  evident  to  anyone  who  reflects,  that 
the  only  immediate  beneficiaries  of  the  sacrifice 
offered  up  on  the  Altar  of  the  Cross  were  those 
pious  Hebrews  who  lived  and  died  between  the 
time  of  Abraham  and  the  moment  of  the  offering 
up  of  the  sacrifice  on  Mount  Calvary,  in  the  certain 
faith  of  the  fulfilment  of  the  promise  made  to 

59 


Abraham,  that  is,  through  faith  in  a  Saviour  known 
to  them  as  the  Messiah,  who  is  known  to  us  as 
Jesus  the  Christ.  Certainly  those  Gentiles  who  had 
lived  and  died  during  the  same  period,  dur- 
ing those,  to  them,  dark  ages,  illuminated  by  no 
light  divine,  who  were  as  unaware  of  the  need  of 
a  Saviour,  as  they  were  of  the  promise  of  one, 
could  hardly  be  considered  as  participants ;  or  there 
would  have  been  no  difference  between  Jew  and 
Gentile.  If  the  heathen  world  as  then  constituted 
was  amenable  to  any  law  of  God,  it  was  not  cut 
off  from  all  communion  with  him.  If  it  was 
not  amenable  to  any  law  of  God,  it  never  trans- 
gressed any,  and  so  was  in  an  entirely  different 
position  from  that  of  the  chosen  people;  indeed,  it 
is  not  possible  to  discern  any  means  whereby  the 
heathen  of  this  period  or  of  those  periods  which 
had  gone  before  could  have  availed  themselves  of 
the  benefits  of  the  sacrifice  of  the  cross.  Certainly 
again,  those  who  failing  to  see  the  great  difference 
between  the  positions  of  the  Jew  and  the  Gentile, 
take  upon  themselves  the  sins  of  which,  the  Jewish 
nation  alone  was  guilty  do  so  gratuitously  and  un- 
asked. 

Among  these  Gentiles  there  were  doubtless  many 
uncovenanted  servants  of  God,  and  even  inspired 
ones ;  Balaam  and  the  author  of  the  Book  of  Job 
were  undoubtedly  inspired,  and  God  did  not  disdain 
to  call  the  founder  of  the  Persian  empire  "my 
servant",  but  what  his  manner  of  dealing  with  the 
vast  majority  was,  we  know  not,  any  more  than  we 
know  the  fate  of  those  unconverted  Gentiles  who 
have  lived  and  died  since  the  day  of  Calvary  or 

60 


those  still  living.  To  put  the  matter  in  a  brief  sen- 
tence; The  benefit  of  the  sacrifice  of  Jesus  was, 
for  the  Gentiles,  altogether  PROSPECTIVE;  for 
the  Jews  it  was  altogether  RETROSPECTIVE. 
For  them  Jesus  was  a  Ransom,  a  Sacrifice,  a  Re- 
deemer, the  Son  of  Abraham,  the  Son  of  David, 
their  Messiah,  their  King,  the  Corner  Stone  of  a 
mighty  fabric  by  them  rejected.  For  us  he  is  a 
Saviour,  a  Mediator,  our  Prophet,  our  great  High 
Priest,  our  living  reigning  King,  the  Good  Shep- 
herd, the  Teacher,  our  Advocate,  the  Head  of  the 
Church,  the  Light  of  the  World,  the  Prince  of 
Peace. 


CHAPTER  X. 
"THEN  SAID  i :  'LO,  i  COME  WITH  THE  ROLL  OF 

THE    BOOK    WHICH    IS    WRITTEN    CONCERN- 
ING  ME/  PS.   X\,   7. 
"NOW    SPEAKEST   THOU    PLAINLY". 

John   xm,   29. 

I  have  considered  the  story  of  our  Lord's 
mission  as  told  by  himself,  in  the  form  of 
a  parable ;  but  the  Lord  Jesus  did  not  always  speak 
in  parables,  and  we  may  now  direct  our  attention 
to  another  explanation  of  his  mission  told  by  him- 
self, at  an  earlier  date  in  plain,  undisguised  speech. 
The  first  account  was  intended  for  the  benefit  of 
"the  Chief  Priests  and  the  Scribes  and  Pharisees", 
while  that  which  we  are  now  coming  to  was  for  the 
people  at  large. 

These  are  the  words  in  which  the  Lord  Jesus 
declared  the  work  he  came  to  do : 

"The  Spirit  of  the  Lord  is  upon  me,  because 
he  hath  anointed  me  to  preach  good  tidings  to  the 
poor. 

"He  hath  sent  me  to  heal  the  broken-hearted; 

"To  preach  deliverance  to  the  captive  and  re- 
covering of  sight  to  the  blind ; 

"To  set  at  liberty  them  that  are  bruised ; 

"To  preach  the  ACCEPTABLE  YEAR  of  the 
Lord." 

62 


The  occasion  of  this  declaration  is  related  by 
the  evangelist  Luke.  The  Lord  Jesus  had  come 
one  Sabbath  Day  to  the  city  among  the  hills,  where 
he  had  been  brought  up,  and,  as  his  custom  was,  he 
went  into  the  synagogue  and  taking  part  in  the 
public  worship  stood  up  to  read ;  and  when  the  roll 
of  the  book  was  handed  to  him  he  found  the  place 
where  the  words  quoted  were  written.  They  are 
easily  recognizable  as  the  opening  verses  of  the 
sixty-first  chapter  of  Isaiah.  When  he  had  read 
them,  he  sat  down  according  to  the  custom  of 
Jewish  teachers  when  giving  instruction  and  the 
eyes  of  all  that  were  in  the  synagogue  were  fastened 
upon  him.  Never  before  had  congregation  listened 
to  such  a  remarkable  exposition  of  any  passage  of 
scripture  as  followed,  nor  ever  has  it  since.  "THIS 
DAY"  said  Jesus  "is  this  scripture  fulfilled  in  your 
ears",  signifying  that  it  was  he,  Jesus  the  carpenter, 
his  auditors'  fellow-townsman,  whom  they  all  knew 
and  to  whom  they  were  listening,  of  whom  the 
prophet  Isaiah  had  spoken  700  years  before  as  the 
one  anointed  to  preach  the  good  news  of  the  King- 
dom of  Heaven  and  to  proclaim  the  arrival  of  the 
year  acceptable  to  the  Lord  for  the  admission  of 
the  Gentiles  into  fellowship  in  the  Church  and  the 
re-establishment  of  the  covenant  relationship  be- 
tween God  and  all  the  peoples  of  the  earth  severed 
in  the  time  of  Abraham,  when  "all  flesh"  and 
not  one  nation  alone  was  to  see  the  salvation  of 
God.  Well  may  our  Lord  have  said :  "Your  father 
Abraham  rejoiced  to  see  my  day  and  he  saw  it  and 
was  glad". 

But  the  prophet  was  in  his  own  country  and  his 

63 


gracious  words  were  not  believed.  Both  he  and 
his  message  were  there  and  then  rejected  and  there 
was  none  to  do  him  honor.  He  may  have  expected 
this  or,  at  least,  have  been  in  doubt  as  to  the  man- 
ner in  which  his  announcement  would  be  received, 
for  there  is  much  significance  in  our  Lord's  leaving 
what  he  did  wnread.  Had  he  not  closed  the  book 
when  he  did,  he  would  have  read  words  prophetical, 
not  of  his  rejection,  but  of  his  acceptance  as  the 
expected  Messiah.  That  congregation  would  have 
learned  that  the  time  had  arrived  when  it  was  within 
the  power  of  their  nation  to  cease  from  being  a 
nation  of  vine-dressers  and  feeders  of  flocks  and 
to  become  a  nation  of  priests,  blessed  by  the  Lord, 
chosen  of  him  to  carry  the  good  news  of  the  King- 
dom of  Heaven  to  all  people  and  into  all  lands. 

But  he  stopped  short  of  this.  It  may  not  have 
been  clear  to  him  that  all  the  prophecy  was  to  be 
fulfilled,  that  the  nation  would  have  the  wisdom  to 
seize  upon  the  opportunity  offered  it ;  that  the 
prophet  "clothed  with  the  garments  of  SALVA- 
TION and  covered  with  the  robe  of  RIGHTEOUS- 
NESS" would  be  received  in  a  manner  that  would 
make  fulfilment  possible,  but  he  read  enough  to 
make  clear  the  announcement  that  the  time  at 
least  had  arrived  for  setting  up  on  earth  the  King- 
dom of  Heaven.  And  this,  it  had  been  foretold, 
was  to  be  set  up,  not  by  means  of  a  tragedy,  a  revo- 
lution, or  even  by  an  army  composed  of  legions  of 
angels,  but  in  a  natural  order  "as  the  earth  bringeth 
forth  her  bud  and  the  garden  causeth  the  things 
that  are  sown  in  it  to  spring  forth".  This  kingdom 
was  to  be  set  up  in  Jerusalem  and  the  Messiah  was 


to  be  its  ruler.  From  Jerusalem  was  to  go  forth 
to  the  ends  of  the  earth  an  army  of  preachers.  One 
hundred  and  twenty  thousand  priests  it  has  been 
computed  were  available  in  Judea  at  this  time  to 
carry  the  "gospel  of  peace"  to  all  nations.  Did  the 
Psalmist  have  in  his  mind  this  time,  one  wonders, 
or  some  other,  when  he  prophesied  "The  Lord  gave 
the  word :  great  was  the  company  of  those  that 
published  it"  ?  or  Isaiah  when  he  said : 

"How  beautiful  upon  the  mountains 

Are  the  feet  of  him  that  bringeth  good  tidings, 
that  publisheth  peace; 

That  bringeth  good  tidings  of  good,  that  publish- 
eth salvation ; 

That  saith  unto  Zion  Thy  God  reigneth" ! 

But  some  500  years  before  David  and  750  before 
Isaiah  prophesied,  the  setting  up  of  this  kingdom 
had  taken  a  very  concrete  shape  and  become  the 
subject  of  a  solemn  compact  between  God  and  his 
people,  attested  on  behalf  of  both  parties  and  put 
into  writing  by  Moses,  the  terms  of  God's  part  in 
it  reading : 

"If  ye  will  attentively  hearken  to  my  voice  and  keep 

my  covenant, 
You  will  become  to  me  a  choice  possession  beyond 

all  people 

Though  the  whole  earth  is  mine; 
Yea  you  will  become  unto  me  a  KINGDOM  of 

PRIESTS." 

Over  this  kingdom  of  priests,  a  PRIEST  KING 
was  needed  to  reign,  of  whom  Melchizedek,  king 

65 


and  priest  of  the  Most  High  God,  who,  bearing 
bread  and  wine,  met  Abraham  returning  from  the 
slaughter  of  the  kings  and  blessed  him,  was  the 
type,  "without  father,  without  mother,  without 
descent,  having  neither  beginning  of  days,  nor  end 
of  life,  but  made",  says  the  writer  of  the  Epistle 
to  the  Hebrews,  "like  unto  the  Son  of  God".  But 
unlike  his  mysterious  type,  who  came  we  know  not 
whence  and  disappeared,  as  mysteriously  as  he 
came,  we  know  not  whither,  we  know  of  the  Lord 
Jesus  Christ,  both  whence  he  was  and  whither  he 
went. 

Of  the  approach  of  this  kingdom,  John,  the 
last  of  the  Hebrew  prophets,  after  a  silence  of  400 
years,  was  the  herald ;  when  'John  was  delivered 
up"  Jesus  himself  took  up  the  cry  of  the  Baptist 
and  the  twelve  and  the  seventy  were  then  both  very 
emphatically  charged  to  proclaim  it,  and  even  to 
those  who  would  not  receive  them  and  the  dust  of 
whose  cities  they  were  bade  to  shake  off  from  their 
feet,  these  were  commanded  to  say  "Notwithstand- 
ing be  ye  sure  of  this,  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  is 
come  nigh  unto  you". 

But  the  proclamation  was  unheeded.  The  golden 
opportunity,  never  to  be  offered  to  them  again, 
was  neglected:  in  rejecting  the  preacher  of  right- 
eousness, they  rejected  the  kingdom  of  righteous- 
ness. Spiritual  pride  became  the  ruin  of  the  na- 
tion and  prevented  the  leaders  of  Jewish  society 
from  recognizing  and  acknowledging  their  Messiah 
when  he  was  among  them.  "Have  any  of  the  rulers 
believed  on  him?"  they  asked  with  scorn.  ;<When 
the  Messiah  comes",  they  no  doubt  thought,  "when 

66 


the  Messiah  comes  to  set  up  a  kingdom",  in  which 
they  expected  to  be  the  prominent  figures,  "when 
he  comes  he  will  not  go  to  the  common  people  first ; 
he  will  present  his  credentials  to  the  properly  con- 
stituted guardians  of  the  knowledge  of   God,   the 
conservators  of  the  truth,  the  monopolists  of  re- 
ligion.    This  'fellow',  who  evidently  doesn't  know 
the  distinctions  of  society,  who  consorts  with  sin- 
ners  and  calls   the   spiritual   rulers   of  the   people 
hypocrites,  can  never  be  the  man  ordained  from  of 
old  to  drive  out  our  hateful  oppressors  and  set  up 
a  kingdom  of  his  own."     And  so  the  kingdom  of 
which  prophets  had   foretold  and  poets  had   sung 
was  not  set  up.    The  "acceptable  year"  for  the  pur- 
pose   was    preached    throughout    the    length    and 
breadth  of  Judea,  but  it  passed  unheeded,  by.    The 
MESSENGER  of  the  COVENANT  talked  to  ears 
that  would   not   hear;   the  bearer   of   the   nation's 
pardon   was   despised   and   rejected;   the   long   ex- 
pected heir  was  denied  his  inheritance ;  the  Son  did 
not  receive  from  the  husbandmen  the  overdue  trib- 
ute.    Hailed  he  was  "King  of  the  Jews",  but  in 
mockery  and  derision ;  the  emblems  of  royalty  were 
accorded  him  in  a  like  spirit ;  the  royal  robe,  the 
crown,  the  sceptre  and  the  throne — the  throne  of 
the  cross.     But  this  was  the  hour  of  his  enemies — 
"the  power  of  darkness"   ruled   and   so   the  Lord 
of  Life  was  put  to  death ;  the  Light  of  the  Gentiles 
was  by  Gentiles  crucified,  the  Glory  of  Israel  was 
by  Israelites  put  to  shame.    It  was  not  the  degrada- 
tion of  the  cross,  which  he,  for  the  joy  that  was 
set   before   him,   despised,   not   the   nails,   not   the 
thorns,  not  the  derisive  jeers  of  his  enemies,  nor 


the  desertion  of  his  friends  and  kinsmen,  which 
made  applicable  the  words  of  the  prophet,  "Behold 
and  see  if  there  be  any  sorrow  like  unto  my  sor- 
row" ;  but  the  ignominious  ending  of  the  most 
glorious  mission  ever  undertaken,  in  preparation 
for  which  two  thousand  years  had  been  spent  in 
vain. 


CHAPTER  XI. 

"THESE  BE  THE  DAYS  OF  VENGEANCE". 

Luke  xxi,  22. 

TTERE  the  story  ends.  The  sequel  is  only,  in 
degree,  less  tragic.  Profane  history,  silent 
about  the  great  things  of  which  the  gospel  tells, 
now  has  all  to  say,  and  sacred  history  keeps  silence. 
It  may  be  read  with  much  detail  in  the  pages  of  the 
eye-witness  Josephus,  the  historian  Tacitus,  and 
seen  pictured  to-day  at  Rome  in  the  stone  of  Domi- 
tian.  The  Lord  of  the  Vineyard  came,  as  threat- 
ened, and  destroyed  those  wicked  husbandmen  with 
a  terrible  destruction.  The  vineyard  was  taken 
from  them  and  given  to  others.  The  Kingdom  of 
God  became  the  inheritance  of  the  Gentiles.  The 
fif teen-hundred-year-old  threat  "If  ye  will  not  be 
reformed  by  me  I  will  bring  a  sword  upon 

you  that  shall  avenge  the  quarrel  of  my  covenant" 
was  executed.  The  sword  was  the  sword  of  Rome 
and  its  execution  was  done  in  the  year  of  our  Lord 
70.  Rome  not  yet  founded,  and  the  walls  of 
Jerusalem  yet  to  be  built,  were  both  within  the 
vision  of  that  prophet  of  whom  it  is  said  the  Lord 
spake  not  in  "dark  sayings",  but  mouth  to  mouth. 
His  prophetic  foresight  enabled  him  to  see  and 

69 


describe  with  a  vividness  not  more  than  equalled 
by  those  who,  1500  years  later,  were  actual  specta- 
tors of  the  desolation  wrought,  the  awful  events 
which  were  to  take  place  and  the  agency  by  which 
they  were  to  be  accomplished.  'The  Lord"  said 
Moses  "shall  bring  a  nation  against  thee  from  far, 
from  the  end  of  the  earth,  as  swift  as  the  eagle 
flieth,  whose  tongue  thou  shalt  not  understand;  a 
nation  of  fierce  countenance,  which  shall  not  regard 
the  person  of  the  old  nor  show  favor  to  the  young; 
*  *  and  he  shall  besiege  thee  in  all  thy  gates, 
until  thy  high  and  fenced  walls  come  down." 

At  this  time  the  abomination  spoken  of  by 
Daniel  the  prophet  stood  in  the  holy  place  and  all 
the  prophecies  concerning  the  fate  of  Jerusalem 
came  to  a  focus  and  that  great  tribulation,  prophe- 
sied by  our  Lord,  such  as  was  not  since  the  begin- 
ning of  the  world,  came  upon  it.  Of  the  holy 
temple,  the  noblest  building  of  all  time,  which  even 
its  captors,  for  the  sake  of  its  beauty,  desired  to 
spare,  not  one  stone,  as  our  Lord  also  foretold,  was 
left  upon  another,  and  the  holy  city  became  an  un- 
inhabitable ruin,  bearing  witness  to  the  world  for- 
ever that  all  things  prophesied,  concerning  her, 
were  either  accomplished  or  never  were  to  be. 
Caught  like  rats  in  a  trap,  the  Christians,  remem- 
bering the  words  of  the  Lord,  being  absent  from 
the  city,  the  Jews  were  slain  with  the  sword,  and 
those,  unfit  for  slavery,  who  escaped  the  sword 
met  the  same  death  they  had  meted  out  to  their 
King.  As  they  had  said,  so  was  it  done  unto  them, 
"His  blood  be  upon  our  heads  and  upon  our  chil- 
dren's." On  the  road  to  Calvary  Jesus  was  fol- 

70 


lowed  by  many  weeping  women  to  whom  he  turned 
and  said  "Daughters  of  Jerusalem,  weep  not  for 
me,  but  weep  for  yourselves  and  for  your  chil- 
dren", knowing  that  many  yet  unborn  would  pay 
a  heavy  price  for  that  day's  wretched  work. 

Does  this  terrible  vengeance  unparalleled  in  all 
history  suggest  that  those  things  which  had  been 
done  in  Jerusalem  had  been  foreordained  of  God? 
Is  it  possible  to  conceive  of  a  JUST  BEING  com- 
pelling men  to  commit  an  act  of  great  atrocity  and 
then  punishing  them  for  committing  it? 


CHAPTER  XII. 

"BECAUSE  i  LIVE  YE  SHALL  LIVE  ALSO." 

John  xiv,  ip. 

TN  giving  up  their  king  to  the  Gentiles  to  be 
crucified,  the  Jews  had  done  their  worst.  They 
had  caused  the  MESSENGER  of  THE  NEW 
COVENANT  to  be  put  to  death;  but  they  were 
powerless  to  avert  the  establishment  of  the  cove- 
nant he  came  to  inaugurate.  Although,  as  a  nation, 
the  Jews  had  failed  to  take  advantage  of  the  oc- 
casion for  which  they  had  been  prepared  God's 
patience  was  not  exhausted  but  his  hand  was 
stretched  out  still  and  the  individuals  of  the  nation 
were  admitted  to  participation  on  equal  terms  with 
the  Gentiles  in  the  privileges  which  the  nation  had 
so  determinedly  rejected,  and  a  respite  of  nearly  40 
years  was  granted  before  the  great  day  of  his  wrath 
came  upon  their  city  and  nation. 

In  the  intervening  period  between  the  crucifixion 
and  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem,  the  city  became 
the  centre  from  which  Christianity  has  radiated  to 
the  circumference  of  the  earth.  The  chosen  wit- 
nesses of  the  resurrection  had  been  commanded  to 
declare  that  event  first  in  Jerusalem,  afterwards 
in  Judea  generally,  and  then  in  that  strange  semi- 
Judean  country,  Samaria. 

Thus  the  Christian  Church  had  its  beginning. 

72 


Not  at  first  were  Christians  so  called,  nor  at  Jerusa- 
lem. The  first  disciples  were  Jews,  but  they  neces- 
sarily worshipped  apart  from  their  orthodox 
brethren,  and  so  were  called  a  sect — a  sect,  as  the 
Jews  in  Rome  said,  that  was  "everywhere  spoken 
against",  of  course  by  the  orthodox.  It  was  not 
till  after  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem  that  converts 
gave  up  all  Jewish  ceremonial. 

The  message  which  the  chosen  witnesses  were 
charged  to  proclaim  "in  Jerusalem  and  in  all  Judea 
and  in  Samaria  and  unto  the  uttermost  part  of  the 
earth"  as  a  fundamental  doctrine  of  a  universal 
religion,  was  the  Resurrection  of  Jesus,  as  an 
earnest  of  the  resurrection  of  all  believers  to  a  new 
and  endless  life,  to  an  IMMORTALITY  resting 
not  on  the  deductions  of  philosophers,  nor  on  the 
inborn  instinct  or  desire  of  the  creature ;  but  on 
the  authority  of  one  no  less  than  the  Son  of  God ; 
himself  to  be  "the  first  fruits  of  them  that  slept." 

Other  men  at  various  times  have  appeared  on 
earth  with  Missions  to  fulfil  and  charged  with 
Messages  of  great  importance  to  the  race. 
Prophets  had  brought  messages  from  God  to  man 
"since  the  world  began",  but  these  spake  darkly, 
because  they  understood  darkly,  not  knowing, 
themselves,  the  full  meaning  of  their  messages ; 
but  when  the  greatest  revelation  of  all  was  to  be 
made,  no  mere  man  was  fitted  for  its  declaration, 
and  God's  own  Son,  furnished  with  proofs  of  his 
authority  and  evidence  of  his  power,  was  charged 
with  it. 

This  resurrection  truth  was  the  gospel  or  "good 
news"  first  preached  by  the  apostles,  "the  resur- 

73 


rection  of  the  body"  made  true  and  good  by  the 
resurrection  of  Christ's  body.  The  immortality  of 
the  soul,  as  an  abstract  question,  was  not  new.  It 
had  been  discussed  for  centuries  by  both  Jew  and 
Gentile.  The  story  of  the  coming  down  of  God 
from  heaven  would  hardly  have  seemed  marvellous 
to  either  Greek  or  Roman,  for  it  was  a  part  of  their 
everyday  belief  that  their  gods  often  visited  the 
earth  and  assumed  human  forms ;  at  one  time,  in- 
deed, Paul  and  Barnabas  with  difficulty  restrained 
the  people  of  Lystra  from  offering  sacrifice  to 
them  as  gods;  but  that  One,  crucified,  dead  and 
buried,  after  lying  three  days  in  the  grave,  had 
risen  from  that  grave  in  verification  of  a  promise  of 
a  similar  resurrection  to  all  who  should  believe  in 
him,  was  something,  indeed,  to  enlist  the  admira- 
tion of  a  world.  The  long  silence  of  the  tomb  was 
broken,  and  the  voice  which  came  from  it  said  "I 
AM  the  RESURRECTION  and  the  LIFE;  he  that 
believeth  on  me  shall  never  die." 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

"l     WILL     POUR     OUT     MY     SPIRIT     UPON     ALL 

FLESH."  Joel  ii,  28. 

CHRISTIANITY  is  not  a  theory  nor  a  science, 
^  not  a  system  of  ethics  or  of  morality;  it  is 
a  series  of  facts.  The  incarnation  is  one,  the  resur- 
rection is  another;  then  followed  a  third  event  in 
the  chain  of  God's  goodness,  without  which  the 
other  two  might  have  remained  void  of  significance 
forever,  and  that  was  the  coming  of  God  in  the 
person  of  the  HOLY  GHOST  to  dwell  with  man, 
not  for  a  time,  but  to  the  end  of  time.  Without 
the  occurrence  of  this  event,  we  should  not  certainly 
know  the  truth  of  the  other  two,  or,  indeed,  be 
positively  assured  of  anything  more  than  our 
senses  could  teach  us  of  God  the  Father,  God  the 
Son,  or  God  the  Holy  Ghost. 

The  birth  of  the  Lord  Jesus  established  a  new 
era;  the  advent  of  the  Holy  Ghost  created  a  new 
race,  a  glorified  humanity.  The  progressive  animal, 
man,  had  at  this  time,  with  God's  gracious  assist- 
ance, raised  himself  up  to  an  intellectual  level  be- 
yond which  further  progress  in  that  direction  was 
not  possible,  and  the  time  had  arrived  for  him  to 
be  entrusted  with  greater  privileges  and  a  more 

75 


extended  power.  The  divine  or  spiritual  side  of  his 
nature  was  now  to  be  taken  in  hand  and  developed 
as  it  never  had  been.  Like  the  resurrection  wit- 
nessed by  Ezekiel  in  the  valley  of  desolation,  a  new 
life  was  to  be  breathed  into  the  dry  bones  of 
humanity.  Created  in  the  image  of  God,  man  was 
now  to  receive  the  Spirit  of  God ;  not  as  the 
prophets  of  old  had  received  it,  by  a  special  grant, 
but  by  virtue  of  a  general  covenanted  right,  prom- 
ised by  the  mouth  of  the  holy  prophets  and  con- 
firmed by  the  divine  Messenger  himself.  Since  the 
time  of  our  Lord,  man  has  shown  no  intellectual 
progress  whatever.  The  intelligence,  the  genius, 
the  wisdom  and  the  wit  of  the  men  of  Greece  and 
Rome  have  not  since  been  surpassed ;  but  since  the 
appearance  of  that  divine  light  which  Christianity 
has  shed  upon  mankind,  there  has  been  a  progress 
of  another  sort — a  spiritual  advance — which  has 
been  felt  throughout  the  world. 

The  presence  of  the  Holy  Spirit  distinguishes 
Christianity  from  every  other  religious  system 
which  has  ever  existed.  The  founders  of  other 
religions  came  and  went,  and  whatever  good  they 
were  capable  of  doing  by  personal  direction  ended 
with  their  lives.  But  the  departure  of  the  Lord 
Jesus  left  not  his  children  orphans,  nor  his  Church 
without  a  guide.  By  the  advent  of  the  Holy  Spirit 
the  Christian  Church  obtained  power  to  become 
the  religion  of  humanity  and  to  make  of  one  kin 
all  the  nations  of  the  earth,  for  the  Holy  Spirit 
is  able  to  occupy  the  whole  world  and  has,  from  the 
time  of  the  apostles,  inspired  men  to  explore  its 
utmost  limits  to  spread  the  good  news  of  God. 


All  other  religions  have  had  geographical  or  politi- 
cal limitations,  but  the  religion  of  Christ  is  bounded 
by  neither  sea  nor  land. 

"My  Kingdom",  said  Jesus,  "is  not  of  this 
world,"  and,  truly,  it  is  not :  it  is  in  the  world,  but 
not  of  it.  Its  members  matriculate  here,  but  are 
graduated  in  another  world ;  they  are  scattered 
throughout  the  earth  and  form  an  organization 
within,  but  independent  of,  every  earthly  govern- 
ment. The  Kingdom  of  God  has  neither  army  nor 
navy,  and  sends  no  ambassador  to  represent  it  at 
any  earthly  court,  yet  it  is  the  most  powerful  of  all 
kingdoms,  and  against  it  even  hell  is  powerless. 

With  the  advent  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  our  Lord's 
direct  work  on  earth  came  to  an  end.  Recalling 
his  work  as  recorded  in  the  Holy  Gospel,  we  are 
reminded  that,  from  the  time  of  his  boyhood-days, 
when  with  boyish  eagerness  he  was  impatient  to  be 
about  his  Father's  business,  to  that  moment,  when 
with  his  expiring  breath  he  said  "It  is  finished", 
his  work  had  been  altogether  for  the  Jews.  But 
now  "all  things  concerning  him"  foretold  by  Moses 
and  the  prophets  and  in  the  Psalms  were  fulfilled. 
The  Messenger  of  the  Covenant  had  delivered  his 
message.  The  Messiah  had  come  to  be  the  Jews' 
anointed  king,  to  save  them  from  their  enemies  and 
to  deliver  them  from  the  hands  of  them  that  hated 
them.  But  they  cared  not  for  his  message  and 
they  refused  him  for  their  king.  Instead,  they  of- 
fered him  up,  unknowingly,  but  not  less  truly,  as 
an  expiatory  SACRIFICE  for  the  sins  of  their 
nation. 

The  door  was  now  open   for  the  admission  of 

77 


the  Gentiles  into  covenant  relationship  with  God, 
and  they  who  had  never  known  him  were  to  know 
him  now  through  the  HOLY  SPIRIT,  by  whom 
they  were  to  be  taught  concerning  sin  and  righteous- 
ness and  judgment — nothing,  apparently  about  ran- 
som, redemption  or  atonement,  at  least  atonement 
as  theologically  explained.  Atonement  and  recon- 
ciliation are  almost  interchangeable  terms  and  the 
meaning  of  both,  to  the  Gentiles,  was  that  they  and 
their  Maker  were  again  in  a  state  of  being  at-one — 
at-one-ment. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

"THE  LORD  WHOM  YE  SEEK  SHALL  SUDDENLY 
COME  TO  HIS  TEMPLE,  EVEN  THE  MESSENGER 

OF  THE  COVENANT."  Md.  Hi,  I. 

T>  ECOGNIZED  relationship  between  man  and 
God,  we  have  seen,  has  always  been  one  of 
covenant.  To  a  covenant  there  must  be  two  parties, 
and  there  must  also  be  a  conditional  promise  on  the 
part  of  one  and  an  acceptance  of  it  on  the  part  of 
the  other.  The  substance  of  God's  promises  has  al- 
ways been  the  same — long  life — even  for  ever  and 
ever.  Acceptance  of  the  condition  seems  at  first 
to  have  been  understood  or  to  have  been  signified 
by  one  in  the  name  of  many;  but  afterwards  ac- 
ceptance was  required  to  be  acknowledged  by  each 
individual.  The  first  covenant,  according  to  the 
Mosaic  account,  was  made  with  the  first  man.  The 
condition  was  obedience.  This  condition  was  dis- 
regarded and  the  covenant  was  broken,  but  God's 
promise  was  renewed  afterwards  in  a  different 
form.  No  further  change  took  place  in  the  mutual 
relation,  apparently,  until  the  time  of  Noah.  After 
the  deluge,  another  covenant  was  made,  but  man 
showed  so  great  a  contempt  for  this  that  God  with- 
drew the  light  of  his  countenance  from  the  nations 

79 


generally  and  made  a  covenant  with  Abraham,  from 
participation  in  which  all  but  Abraham  and  his 
family  were  excluded.  To  this  covenant  a  sign  or 
seal  was  prescribed.  This  covenant  was  never  in- 
tended to  be  permanent,  and  a  new  one  was  prom- 
ised to  the  seed  of  Abraham,  but  when  the  Mes- 
senger of  it  came,  he  was  rejected  and  the  fulfilment 
of  the  promise  was  lost  to  them.  It  was  to  this 
promise,  then,  that  the  Gentile  world  succeeded,  and 
they  became  his  people  which  were  not  his  people 
and  she  beloved  which  was  not  beloved.  The  mes- 
senger of  the  covenant  was  found  of  them  that 
sought  him  not.  He  was  made  manifest  to  them 
that  asked  not  after  him,  'The  people  walking  in 
darkness  and  sitting  in  the  shadow  of  death  beheld 
a  GREAT  LIGHT."  In  a  word,  the  Gentiles,  who 
were  excluded  from  the  covenant  with  Abraham, 
inherited  the  promise  of  the  new  covenant,  from 
which  the  descendents  of  Abraham,  as  such,  were 
now  excluded.  The  sign  or  seal  of  the  new  cove- 
nant is  baptism.  The  personal  promises  of  our 
Lord  to  those  who  come  to  him  have  been  referred 
to;  but  it  necessarily  follows  that  those  who  come 
to  him  must  make  their  approach  in  the  manner  he 
has  ordained.  This  approach  is  by  baptism  alone, 
and  nothing  can  be  more  explicit  than  the  words  in 
which  our  Lord  states  this.  uHe  that  believeth  and 
is  baptised  shall  be  saved.  He  that  believeth  not 
shall  be  condemned."  "Shall  be  saved"!  From 
what?  and  by  what  means?  From  death  of  the 
soul ;  from  eternal  condemnation ;  and  by  entering 
into  a  solemn  personal  covenant  with  his  Maker, 
when  the  erstwhile  child  of  the  world  becomes  at 

80 


once  the  child  of  God,  inheritor  of  the  promised 
blessings  and  also  of  the  responsibilities  of  his  new 
condition. 

It  follows  of  necessity  that  one  who  enters  into 
covenant  relationship  with  another  must  observe 
the  terms  of  the  covenant,  or  it  becomes  void,  and 
so  it  is  with  the  covenanted  right  of  immortality. 
To  enable  the  Christian  to  do  his  part,  strength  is 
given  him  in  that  other  ordinance  of  our  Lord  called 
the  Lord's  Supper,  except  ye  partake  of  which, 
said  he,  "ye  have  no  life  in  you",  "for  this,"  speak- 
ing of  one  of  the  elements,  "is  the  BLOOD  OF 
THE  NEW  COVENANT." 

God  forbid,  if  there  cling  to  any  new-born  child 
the  smallest  particle  of  the  sin  of  Adam,  that  it 
should  not  be  washed  away  in  Baptism;  and  God 
forbid  that  anyone  who  thinks  his  soul  was  ever 
clogged  with  such  a  weight  should  not  be  satisfied 
that  Baptism  removed  it;  but  to  dwell  upon  this 
as  the  end  of  the  ordinance  is  to  obscure  its  real 
significance,  it  being  nothing  short  of  a  new  birth, 
that  new  birth  of  which  the  Lord  Jesus  told  Nico- 
demus,  without  which  none  can  enter  into  the 
kingdom  of  God.  Every  Christian  must  have  two 
births:  a  birth  into  the  household  of  his  earthly 
parents  and  a  birth  into  the  household  of  his 
heavenly  Father.  It  is  commonly  thought  that  he 
receives  his  family  name  at  his  first  birth,  and  at 
his  second  birth  a  name  only  that  will  distinguish 
him  from  other  members  of  the  same  family;  but, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  only  at  his  second  birth 
that  he  becomes  entitled  to  bear  a  family  name,  a 
name  which  is  borne  by  the  largest  family  on 

81 


earth,   which   is   the   same   everywhere   and   in   all 
languages. 

Such  is  a  bald  statement  of  the  Christian  cove- 
nant which  our  Lord  came  down  from  heaven  to 
inaugurate.  The  benefits  which  belong  to  it  are 
revealed  partly  in  the  word  of  God  and,  partly,  and 
perhaps  more  fully,  although  in  a  manner  not  easily 
to  be  described,  direct  to  the  heart  of  the  believer 
through  the  operation  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  whereby 
those  who  desire  to  do  his  will  are  permitted  to 
KNOW  of  a  doctrine,  whether  it  be  of  God  or  not. 

That  one  of  the  parties  to  the  covenant  sealed 
it  with  his  blood  is  a  matter  of  fact,  but  whether 
it  was  ordained  so  to  be  sealed  and  whether  it  was 
absolutely  necessary  that  it  should  be  so  sealed,  may 
be  left  to  the  decision  of  those  who  consider  the 
matter  from  the  testimony  available. 

There  is  an  allegory,  says  Paul,  concerning  the 
old  and  the  new  covenants,  contained  in  a  piece  of 
Old  Testament  history  relating  to  Abraham  and 
his  two  sons.  One  of  these  was  his  by  Hagar  the 
Egyptian,  and  the  other  by  Sarah :  one  was  the 
child  of  a  bondwoman  and  the  other  of  a  free,  and 
these  two  women,  the  apostle  goes  on  to  explain, 
are,  allegorically,  the  two  covenants,  one  the  cove- 
nant of  the  law,  which  tendeth  to  bondage,  and  the 
other  the  covenant  of  that  freedom  with  which 
Christ  did  set  us  free. 

The  old  fable  of  the  hare  and  the  tortoise  has 
been  re-enacted.  While  the  Jewish  hare  slept  in 
confidence  of  the  LAW,  the  heathen  tortoise 
outstripped  him  with  the  certainty  of  the 
PROMISE. 

82 


CHAPTER  XV. 

"YOUR  ADVERSARY  THE  DEVIL,  AS  A  LION  ROAR- 
ING,  GOES   ABOUT   SEEKING   WHOM    HE   MAY 

SWALLOW  UP."  /  Peter  v,  8.- 

\  LTHOUGH  all  Christian  doctrines  necessarily 
^^  radiate  from  the  central  fact  of  the  incarna- 
tion, there  are  four  things  which  stand  out  from  it 
as  the  four  cardinal  points  of  the  mariner's  compass 
stand  out  from  all  the  rest.  These  four  things  are : 
Faith,  Sin,  Repentance,  Forgiveness. 

The  first  of  these  is  a  subject  too  large  to  be 
treated  here  with  any  detail,  but  we  may  say  with 
the  irresistible  logic  of  the  writer  of  the  Epistle  to 
the  Hebrews :  "He  who  cometh  to  God  must  believe 
that  he  is."  This  amount  of  faith,  at  least,  must 
be  insisted  upon  as  a  prerequisite  to  any  benefit  to 
be  derived  from  the  incarnation.  Without  a  belief 
in  the  God  of  revelation,  we  can  neither  ask,  nor 
expect  to  receive,  anything  at  his  hands.  By  faith 
alone  we  become  acquainted  with  God ;  by  faith 
alone  is  our  relationship  to  him  continued. 

It  has  been  noticed  that  the  four  dispensations 
at  their  beginning  had  one  characteristic  in  com- 
mon, and  we  have  seen  that  the  three  dispensations 
which  passed  away  had  also  one  thing  in  common 

83 


which  brought  them  to  an  end.  This  one  thing 
was  SIN — wickedness.  The  same  thing  threatens 
the  disruption  of  the  dispensation  under  which  we 
now  live.  Let  us  try,  therefore,  to  understand  it. 

We  have  already  said  much  about  that  form  of 
sin  which  is  said  to  be  hereditary,  and  so  may  omit 
further  reference  to  it  now.  But,  besides  this, 
there  is  another  theory  of  sin  recognized  by  some 
who  question  the  hereditary  theory.  These  still 
consider  sin  a  congenital  disease,  but  not  an  inherited 
one,  considering  it  instead  as  something  belonging 
to  the  individual  in  his  own  right,  a  natural  and 
congenital  endowment  belonging  to  every  child  of 
man.  This  is  a  very  nice  distinction,  but  unsatis- 
factory, as  it  leaves  the  individual  in  the  same  pre- 
dicament, whichever  theory  he  selects.  The  second 
theory  also  dishonors  God  by  the  implication  that 
he  either  cannot  make  a  perfect  human  being  or 
that  he  chooses  to  make  an  imperfect  one ;  sending 
the  highest  type  of  his  creatures  into  the  world 
with  a  blot  upon  it  from  which  the  lower  types 
are  free !  Is  it  reasonable  to  suppose  that  God 
would  so  mar  his  own  masterpiece? 

John's  definition  of  sin,  which  is  essentially 
Jewish,  is  that  it  is  "the  transgression  of  the  law", 
a  definition  good  enough  as  long  as  there  was  a 
law  to  transgress ;  but  under  the  Christian  dispen- 
sation there  is  none.  The  law,  which  Paul  says 
"was  but  a  schoolmaster  to  bring  us  to  Christ"  and 
"a  shadow  of  good  things  to  come"  served  its  pur- 
pose and  came  to  an  end  at  that  moment  when  the 
Saviour  of  Mankind  cried  out  from  the  cross  "It 
is  finished".  From  that  moment  and  forever  ended 


every  jot  and  tittle  of  the  law.  That  generation 
did  not  pass  away  till  all  things  were  fulfilled  that 
were  to  be  fulfilled.- 

If  there  be  no  law  then,  it  may  be  asked,  is  it 
permissible  "to  steal,  murder,  and  commit  adultery 
and  swear  falsely  and  burn  incense  unto  Baal?" 
There  can  be,  of  course,  but  one  answer.  It  was 
not  righteousness  that  was  abolished,  but  statute 
law,  and  this  was  not  long  abolished  before  God's 
promise  to  write  his  laws  on  men's  hearts  in  place 
thereof  was  fulfilled.  This  was  no  fable,  no  figure 
of  speech,  but  an  actual  reality  which  came  to  pass 
as  promised.  Under  the  new  covenant,  each  sub- 
scriber to  it  is  furnished  with  a  personal  counsellor 
whose  office  it  is  to  admonish  and  convince  con- 
cerning this  particular  thing — sin — who  says  to 
him  at  every  turning  "This  is  the  way,  walk  ye  in 
it".  Whenever,  therefore,  a  Christian  does  that 
which  his  Christian  conscience,  which  is  none  other 
than  the  voice  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  warns  him  it  is 
wrong  to  do,  he  transgresses  the  common  law  of 
God  as  surely  as  one  who  contravenes  a  statute 
transgresses.  With  this  understanding,  we  may 
allow  the  beloved  disciple's  definition  to  go  un- 
challenged. 

But  before  any  law  is  transgressed  there  must 
come  temptation.  No  rational,  normal  being  ever 
commits  sin  without  an  object.  And  this  object 
which,  at  the  time,  seems  to  be  a  thing  to  be  de- 
sired, is  the  temptation  to  sin.  When  this  comes, 
a  contest  takes  place  in  the  Christian's  bosom.  The 
Holy  Spirit  pleads,  the  Tempter  allures  and  the 
will  of  the  individual  decides.  The  issue  is  no  small 

85 


matter.  It  is  a  soul  won  for  heaven  or  for  hell.  To 
gain  the  victory,  the  enemy  of  mankind  arrays  all 
the  powers  at  his  command,  whether  the  soul  fought 
for  be  that  of  a  little  child  or  of  a  full-grown  man 
or  woman.  For  every  state  and  age  there  are  temp- 
tations which  he  knows  how  to  set  before  his  de- 
sired victims  in  their  most  seductive  form. 

But  to  suffer  temptation  is  not  to  sin.  Count 
it  all  joy,  says  the  apostle  James,  when  ye  fall 
into  it.  Never  to  have  been  tempted  is  to  be  in- 
human. Without  temptation,  it  has  been  said, 
there  could  be  no  virtue.  "When  thou  hast  tried 
me"  said  Job  "I  shall  be  as  gold."  Man  can  neither 
hide  himself  from  temptation  nor  flee  from  it,  for 
it  follows  him  whithersoever  he  goes.  It  is  in  the 
fibre  of  his  constitution;  in  the  fibre  of  his  body 
and  in  the  fibre  of  his  brain ;  every  pulsation  of  his 
heart  records  a  temptation  and  temptation  ends 
only  with  the  last  pulsation.  To  this  extent  the 
man  of  to-day  inherits  the  fault  of  the  first  man, 
whether  that  man  was  named  Adam  or  was  name- 
less, and  so  long  as  man  inhabits  this  planet,  under 
the  present  conditions,  so  long  may  he  expect  temp- 
tation to  assail  him.  Well,  indeed,  is  the  petition 
"Lead  us  not  into  temptation",  placed  before  that 
for  deliverance  from  the  Evil  One. 

This  brings  us  to  what  appears  to  be  the  very 
essence  of  sin.  The  very  essence  of  sin  is  NON- 
RESISTANCE  TO  TEMPTATION.  "Resist  the 
devil  and  he  will  flee  from  you".  Entertain  him 
and  you  exclude  the  Holy  Spirit.  The  two  cannot 
dwell  at  one  time  in  the  same  tabernacle.  The  first 
man  mentioned  in  scripture  sinned  when  he  suc- 

86 


cumbed  to  temptation.  Our  Lord's  victory  over 
sin  was  in  resisting  temptation  and  it  is  this  that 
makes  him  our  GREAT  EXEMPLAR.  Had  the 
Lord  Jesus  Christ  yielded  to  the  Tempter  when  he 
said  "If  thou  be  the  Son  of  God  command  these 
stones  to  be  made  bread",  he  would  not  have  been 
the  Saviour  of  Mankind.  It  was  not  "the  passers 
by"  who  said  in  his  ear  "If  thou  be  the  Son  of 
God  come  down  from  the  cross" ;  they  were  but  the 
mouthpiece  of  the  lurking  Tempter  whose  last  op- 
portunity was  fast  disappearing.  What  more  subtle 
temptation  can  we  imagine  than  this :  to  come  down 
from  the  cross,  confound  his  enemies  and  establish 
his  divinity?  But  not  at  the  instigation  of  the 
Devil.  The  Saviour  of  Mankind  was  tempted,  as 
we  are,  from  the  time  of  his  baptism  till  his  last 
moment  on  the  cross,  and  he  resisted  to  the  end ! 
In  earlier  days  one  who  was  intended  to  be  a  deliv- 
erer of  the  children  of  Israel,  when  betrayed  and 
bound,  in  his  last  moments  brought  down  the  pillars 
of  the  house  where  he  was  held  captive,  working 
the  same  ruin  to  himself  that  he  wrought  upon  his 
enemies.  Had  the  man  Jesus  Christ  not  endured 
unto  the  end,  we  may  conceive  that  the  pillars  of 
the  world  would  have  been  shaken.  Physical 
strength,  we  know,  is  the  product  of  resistance. 
Resistance  to  the  rigors  of  climate,  to  the  perils 
of  sea  and  land  makes  men  physically  strong  and 
spiritual  strength  is  gained  by  resistance  to  temp- 
tation in  direct  proportion  to  the  strength  and  length 
of  it. 

All  sin  is  primarily  against  God  and  secondarily 
against  the  soul  of  the  sinner.     No  one  does  an 

87 


injury  to  another  without  doing  one  to  himself. 
David,  King  of  Israel,  after  committing  a  most 
atrocious  crime,  confessed  to  God  "Against  Thee 
only  have  I  sinned  and  done  this  evil",  and  every- 
day law  recognizes  the  same  subordination  of  the 
interests  of  an  individual  wronged  to  the  majesty 
of  the  Law  which  has  been  outraged,  and  the  trans- 
gressor is  charged,  in  the  indictment,  not  with  an 
offence  against  an  individual,  but  with  one  against 
the  peace  and  dignity  of  the  King  or  Common- 
wealth. As  typical  of  the  injury  the  sinner  does 
to  himself,  one  may  take  the  case  of  Cain  and 
Abel.  Abel  was  slain,  but  his  soul  was  preserved; 
Cain  lived  on,  but  a  murderer  with  a  blot  upon  his 
soul  which  nothing  could  wipe  out. 

There  is  a  question  often  asked,  but  seldom 
answered.  Perhaps  it  hardly  deserves  an  answer. 
It  is  the  question  of  the  unthinking  ones :  Why 
does  God  permit  sin  to  exist?  If  it  did  not  exist, 
man  would  not  be  man;  being  incapable  of  sin- 
ning, he  might  approximate  more  nearly  to  the 
angels,  but  man  was  made,  for  a  purpose,  a  little 
lower  than  they,  and  his  ability  to  sin,  or  in  other 
words  to  do  as  seems  to  him  good,  is  one  of  his 
characteristics.  Deprived  of  this  characteristic,  he 
would  not  be  the  wonderful  piece  of  work  he  is,  the 
masterpiece  among  God's  productions,  "the  beauty 
of  the  world,  the  paragon  of  animals".  Of  the 
planets  it  is  said  "He  hath  given  them  a  law  which 
shall  not  be  broken",  and  although  they  in  their 
daily  motions  "declare  the  glory  of  God",  man  with 
his  power  to  break  God's  laws  has  the  opportunity, 
whether  he  exercises  it  or  not,  to  glorify  him  more. 


Without  sin  in  the  world,  the  world  would  not  be 
what  it  is  nor  what  it  was  intended  for.  It  would 
not  be  a  breeding  ground  for  saints,  a  place  in 
which  to  train  for  eternity  and  wherein  to  show 
the  stuff  that  is  in  us.  God  may  look  down  from 
heaven  upon  the  children  of  men  and,  seeing  their 
waywardness  and  wickedness,  their  mad  race  for 
wealth  and  fame  and  power  or  the  sensual  pleasures 
of  life,  their  desire  for  the  things  which  are  seen, 
to  the  neglect  of  the  things  which  are  eternal,  and 
be  sorry  that  he  hath  made  man ;  but,  having  made 
him  for  a  purpose,  God  will  abide  the  result.  Per- 
adventure  there  had  been  ten  righteous  in  a  city 
once,  it  would  have  been  saved  from  destruction, 
and  who  shall  say  that  God  may  not  be  satisfied  if 
a  generation  produces  but  ten  subjects  for  his  king- 
dom? Is  it  worth  while  trying  to  be  one  of  the 
number  ? 

"If  any  man  sin",  "and  there  is  no  one  who 
sinneth  not",  "we  have  an  Advocate  with  the 
Father,  Jesus  Christ  the  Righteous",  who,  knowing 
his  own  and  knowing  also  their  temptations,  says 
of  the  repentant  ones  'These  are  mine.  Father, 
forgive  them;  I  will  be  SPONSOR  for  their  future 
conduct".  And  He,  who  knoweth  whereof  we  are 
made,  who  remembereth  that  we  are  but  dust,  for- 
gives, as  only  he  forgives,  blotting  out  the  misdeed 
and  remembering  the  sin  no  more. 

But  our  Advocate  has  only  to  ask !  "The  Father 
himself  loveth  us"  and  is  more  than  willing  to  for- 
give ;  but  there  is  no  approach  to  him  but  by  the 
Son.  God  delights  not  in  punishment,  although 
there  are  those  who  delight  to  hold  him  up  as 


glorying  in  it,  as  One  indeed  who  would  trip  his 
children  up  on  legal  technicalities.  But  there  is  no 
evidence  to  bear  this  out  or  that  he  ever  directly 
punishes.  Punishment  is  generally  a  consequence 
of  sin  which  the  sinner  brings  upon  himself  and 
which  forgiveness,  even,  cannot  always  avert  or 
take  away.  When  a  parent  warns  a  child  against 
playing  with  fire,  or  it  will  be  burned,  and  the 
child,  not  heeding  the  warning,  plays  with  fire  and 
is  possibly  burned  to  death,  we  do  not  say  that  the 
parent  punished  the  child.  He  or  she  would  pos- 
sibly have  given  its  life  to  save  the  child's  life.  So 
when  God  said  "Eat  not;  for  in  that  day  that  thou 
eatest  thereof  thou  shalt  die,"  he  was  not  neces- 
sarily imposing  a  punishment,  but  only  warning 
against  a  fatal  consequence,  and  the  Unpardonable 
Sin  was  not  made  so  by  decree,  but  became  so  from 
the  v^ry  nature  of  the  sin  itself. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 


"LET    us    HEAR    THE    CONCLUSION    OF    THE 
WHOLE  MATTER".  Reel,  xii,  13. 


have  said  that  the  incarnation  of  the  Lord 
Jesus  Christ  was  the  greatest  event  in  the 
history  of  the  human  race.  It  may  now  be  said 
that  there  is  no  other  event  in  history  that  is  better 
authenticated.  The  wisest  and  best  of  every  Chris- 
tian age  have  firmly  believed  it ;  and  no  man  of 
judicial  mind  can  examine  the  evidence  bearing 
upon  it,  at  the  present  day,  and  remain  uncon- 
vinced of  its  truth.  If  its  product,  Christianity, 
were  abolished  from  the  world,  its  influence  would 
not  be  at  an  end,  for  the  reason  that  it  has  made 
a  permanent  impress  on  the  character  of  mankind. 

There  are  two  other  remarkable  facts  concern- 
ing the  truth  of  the  Christian  religion  that  are 
worthy  of  notice  here.  One  is  that,  in  spite  of  its 
many  enemies,  the  testimony  of  the  Holy  Gospel 
has  not  been  tampered  with,  and  the  other  is  that 
a  better  appreciation  of  our  Lord's  work  is  possible 
to-day,  nineteen  centuries  after  he  accomplished  it, 
than  it  was  in  his  own  time  or  in  any  other  since. 

It  is  not  purposed  to  enlarge  on  the  evidences  of 
Christianity,  for  this  subject  has  been  exhaustively 

91 


treated  by  the  greatest  minds  of  different  Christian 
ages;  but  it  may  be  excusable,  before  leaving  the 
subject  of  our  Lord's  Mission,  to  say  a  few  words 
concerning  the  creature  for  whose  benefit  this  won- 
derful work  was  undertaken,  and  of  his  present-day 
relation  to  the  event  of  nineteen  hundred  years  ago. 
God  has  written  two  books :  one  we  call,  pre- 
eminently, The  BOOK,  the  other  NATURE.  Both 
alike  are  open  to  man's  questioning  and  under- 
standing, but  neither  can  be  fully  understood  ex- 
cept by  those  who  love  them.  Both  alike  reveal  a 
MASTER  HAND  conducting  a  series  of  experi- 
ments with  the  subjects  of  his  own  creation,  both 
declare  the  wisdom,  power  and  love  of  that  Master 
Hand  and  both,  if  intelligently  questioned  will  re- 
turn an  intelligible  reply.  No  other  books  have 
been  more  carefully  read  and  studied  than  these, 
but  the  riches  contained  in  them  are  still  only  par- 
tially developed.  Of  the  two,  the  book  of  Nature 
may  be  said  more  truly  to  be  written  by  the  hand 
of  God  than  the  other.  The  other  is  the  mind  of 
God,  but  is  written  by  the  hand  of  man.  The  book 
of  Nature  agrees  with  the  Gospel  of  the  Lord  Jesus 
in  saying  nothing  of  any  Fall  of  Man.  On  the 
contrary,  it  indicates  his  steady  and  continuous 
progress  throughout  the  ages  of  which  it  testifies. 
This  book  is  read  with  eyes  unprejudiced  and  with 
understandings  upon  which  no  restrictions  are 
placed.  Unfortunately,  for  reasons  which  need 
not  be  mentioned,  the  other  book  is  not  so  read. 
To  read  it  with  the  eyes  of  others  and  to  understand 
it  with  the  understanding  of  others  only,  is  to  make 
of  an  open  book  a  sealed  book  and  to  nullify  the 

92 


highest  faculties  which  God  has  given  us.  For 
a  proper  understanding,  however,  of  the  better  part 
of  man — his  spiritual  nature — this  book  is  the  only 
text-book  and  authority. 

That  it  is  not  always  in  agreement  with  the 
revelations  of  science,  is  unimportant.  The  revela- 
tions of  science  themselves  are  none  other  than 
indirect  revelations  from  God.  So  we  find  the 
poetical  idea  that  man  "At  once  upstood  intelligent, 
all  creatures  understood"  although  agreeable  to  the 
Mosaic  account,  is  not  in  consonance  with  what  we 
know  of  natural  history.  Moses  "was  learned  in 
all  the  learning  of  the  Egyptians"  and  the  account 
of  creation  given  in  the  Book  of  Genesis  was  no 
doubt  that  generally  accepted  by  the  learned  at  the 
time  the  author  of  the  book  wrote.  If  we  were  to 
compare  a  standard  work  on  science  of  a  hundred 
years  ago  with  one  written  to-day,  and  note  the 
errors  in  the  former,  we  might  look  with  lenience 
on  the  errors  in  a  book  written  4,000  years  ago. 
The  writings  of  Bacon  and  Newton,  two  master 
minds  of  the  world,  are,  when  examined  by  the 
light  of  the  knowledge  of  to-day,  found  to  con- 
tain much  error. 

Man,  at  the  first,  must  have  been  of  the  earth, 
earthy.  Generations  possibly  passed  before  he 
learned  to  observe  intelligently,  to  express  his 
thoughts  with  clearness,  certainly  before  he  could 
put  them  in  a  form  which  should  give  them  perma- 
nence. Yet  all  his  later-day  capabilities  and  many 
more  were  within  the  possibility  of  possession  by 
him  when  man  first  appeared  on  earth,  or  they  could 
never  have  been  developed  in  him.  Human  beings 

93 


may  be  compared  to  some  objects  of  great  beauty, 
but  humble  origin,  existing  in  the  lower  kingdom. 
Unless  that  beauty,  afterwards  developed  in  the 
field  flower,  was  latent  in  it,  cultivation  could  not 
have  brought  it  out.  So  the  standard  set  for  man 
when  he  was  first  formed  of  the  dust  of  the  earth 
was,  we  may  reasonably  conceive,  no  less  than  "the 
measure  of  the  stature  of  the  fulness  of  Christ". 
With  what  pleasure  and  tender  care  may  we  not 
imagine  the  Great  Husbandman  to  have  watched  the 
development  of  the  powers  of  his  most  wonderful 
creation;  and  how  often  must  he,  like  an  earthly 
parent,  have  held  out  his  hands  to  encourage  and 
steady  the  weak  footsteps  of  his  children.  But 
they  knew  not  who  their  Father  was.  Then  he 
revealed  himself  to  them  out  of  the  desert  land  and 
the  waste  howling  wilderness,  he  led  them,  he  in- 
structed them.  The  earliest  revelation  that  con- 
cerns us  of  to-day,  is  that  to  Abram.  The  earlier 
revelations,  such  as  those  to  Adam  and  Noah,  were 
not  recorded,  as  far  as  we  know,  till  500  years 
after  Abram's  call.  After  the  call  of  Abram,  God 
hid  himself  from  the  larger  part  of  mankind,  but 
even  then  "he  left  not  himself  without  witness  in 
that  he  did  good",  remembering  his  promise  that 
day  and  night,  seed-time  and  harvest  should  never 
depart  from  the  earth.  These  two  thousand  sad 
years  were  to  him  but  a  moment ;  "In  a  little  wrath" 
he  said  "I  hid  my  face  from  thee  for  a  moment,  but 
with  everlasting  kindness  will  I  have  mercy  on 
thee".  Then  came  that  last  revelation  of  his  glory 
to  all  flesh,  in  the  person  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ 
treading  the  highways  and  byways  of  Judea  and 

94 


preaching,  throughout  its  cities  and  villages,  the 
good  news  of  the  Kingdom  of  his  Father,  who 
then  for  the  first  time  was  revealed  to  the  world  as 
"Our  Father." 

"What  is  man  that  thou  art  mindful  of  him" 
questioned  the  psalmist  thousands  of  years  ago, 
and  the  question  is  as  pertinent  to-day.  No  an- 
swer can  be  satisfactory  which  fails  to  recognize 
the  fact  that  two  men  are  involved  in  the  problem; 
the  man  of  nature  and  the  man  of  God ;  the  animal 
man  and  the  man  as  God  intended  him  to  be.  One 
who  reasons  as  if  man  had  a  place  in  nature  apart 
from  God  can  never  answer  the  question.  Man 
cannot  separate  himself,  whatever  he  may  do,  from 
his  relation  to  God.  "If  I  go  up  into  heaven"  says 
the  psalmist  "thou  art  there  and  if  I  go  down  into 
hell  thou  art  there  also".  This  writer,  answering 
his  own  question,  in  one  place,  evidently  with  the 
animal  man  before  his  mind,  says  that  "he  may  be 
compared  to  the  beasts  that  perish" ;  but  elsewhere, 
with  another  man  in  his  thoughts,  he  answers  the 
question  differently :  "Thou  madest  him  a  little 
lower  than  God,  that  thou  mightest  crown  him  with 
glory." 

Man,  made  of  the  dust  of  the  earth,  but  destined 
to  contain  within  him  the  Spirit  of  God,  was  with- 
out doubt  created  for  a  purpose,  and  that  not  a 
temporary  one,  and  for  every  particle  of  his  present 
excellence  there  is  required  of  him  both  "thanks 
and  use".  The  parable  of  the  talents  is  no  mere 
story.  The  man  who  plants  a  seed  in  the  ground, 
however  sordid  his  motive  for  doing  so  may  be,  is 
carrying  out  God's  purpose  that  his  people  shall  be 

95 


fed,  and  everyone  engaged  in  any  useful  and  honest 
occupation  is  similarly  employed,  whether  he  knows 
it  or  not.  More  than  this,  God  has  made  man  his 
fellow-worker  in  the  salvation  of  man. 

Passing  at  one  step,  then,  from  this  world  to 
the  next,  does  it  not  follow,  that  if  God  uses  the 
services  of  the  man  of  Clay  to  carry  on  his  work 
here,  he  will  make  use  of  the  services  of  the  man 
of  Spirit  to  carry  on  the  work  of  his  eternal  King- 
dom? Christianity  has  taught  us  but  little,  if  we 
have  not  learned  that  it  is  more  blessed  to  give  than 
to  receive,  to  serve  than  to  be  served,  to  minister 
than  to  be  ministered  to.  What  worlds,  unknown 
to  us  now,  may  there  not  be  to  conquer  or  to  govern 
hereafter?  What  occupations  to  satisfy  the  most 
noble  ambition?  "Know  ye  not  that  ye  shall  judge 
angels  ?"  says  the  apostle.  "Have  thou  authority 
over  ten  cities"  says  the  returned  Lord,  and  is  it 
likely  that  He,  the  Ceaseless  Worker,  who  has  or- 
dained us  to  be  kings  and  priests  for  ever,  will  per- 
mit such  high  offices  to  be  mere  sinecures? 

These  reflections  may  not  be  agreeable  to  those 
who  think  of  eternity  as  a  period  of  perpetual  rest 
and  of  heaven  as  a  place  where  there  is  nothing  to 
do ;  but  those  used  to  active  and  useful  lives  here 
could  only  regard  such  conditions  with  dismay. 

Mr.  Lecky,  in  one  of  his  books,  quotes  an 
epitaph  on  a  tombstone  in  a  German  churchyard : 

"I  will  arise  O  Christ  when  Thou  callest  me ; 
but  oh !  let  me  rest  awhile  for  I  am  very  weary." 

This  desire  for  rest  is  no  doubt  felt  by  many ; 
but  when  we  wake  up  in  HIS  likeness  the  weari- 


ness,  which  belongs  only  to  the  flesh,  will  have 
disappeared.  When  the  spirit  is  relieved  of  its 
load  of  clay  and  inhabits  that  body  which  God  shall 
then  have  been  pleased  to  give  it,  the  clog  which 
wearies  will  have  been  removed  forever,  we  shall, 
with  strength  renewed, 

''Mount  up  with  wings  as  eagles, 
We  shall  run  and  not  be  weary, 
We  shall  walk  and  not  faint." 

It  does  not  require  much  philosophy,  for  those 
who  have  led  long  or  trying  lives,  to  lay  the  bur- 
den of  their  flesh  aside  saying  "Let  the  end  come." 
But  there  is  no  end.  There  is  an  eternity  which 
the  just  and  the  unjust  alike  must  face.  Who 
plunges  into  this  abyss  with  his  eyes  shut,  does 
so  at  his  peril,  but  not  without  warning. 

The  first  truth  that  a  human  being  should  be 
taught  is  that  he  is  not  a  mortal,  but  an  immortal 
being  with  a  body  designed  for  the  habitation  of 
God,  and  his  conduct  through  life  should  be  gov- 
erned at  all  points  by  this  knowledge.  "Our  citi- 
zenship" says  the  Apostle  "is  in  heaven"  and  until 
we  realize  this  fact  we  are  certainly  a  long  way 
from  being  "fellow-citizens  with  the  saints  and  of 
the  household  of  God".  Christians,  says  the  writer 
of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  must  declare  plainly 
by  their  actions  that  they  seek  a  better  country 
than  their  own,  that  is,  an  heavenly.  And  this 
country  is  not  to  be  sought  as  some  countries  have 
been,  without  chart  or  competent  pilot,  for  both 
have  been  provided. 

It  is  the  failure  to  realize  the  possibilities  of  the 
future  which  makes  the  religion  of  to-day  the 

97 


superficial  thing  it  is,  and  "When  the  Son  of 
Man  cometh"  he  may  indeed  "find  faith  wanting 
on  the  earth!"  In  place  of  it,  he  may  find  an 
organization  with  the  name,  but  without  the  spirit, 
of  Christianity.  He  may  find  people  singing  hymns 
expressive  of  sentiments  they  feel  in  no  degree 
and  repeating  "Amens"  without  any  desire  that 
the  petitions  to  which  they  assent  be  fulfilled.  The 
incarnation  will  be  celebrated  with  feasting  and 
the  resurrection  by  a  display  of  fine  raiment,  philan- 
thropy, so-called,  will  abound,  and  there  will  be 
plenty  of  rich  churches  and  eloquent  preachers  of 
ethics  and  abstract  problems,  but  those  who  "hun- 
ger and  thirst  after  righteousness"  will  be  those 
who  go  empty  away.  There  is  a  dry  rot  already 
sapping  the  Christian  religion.  The  tenets  of  Chris- 
tianity are  accepted  much  as  the  doctrine  of  the 
Solar  System  is  accepted  or  assent  is  given  to  the 
Law  of  Gravitation,  and  they  affect  people  spirit- 
ually in  about  the  same  degree.  Men  live  prefer- 
ably in  the  reflected  light  of  Christianity,  when 
they  might  enjoy  its  full  blaze.  Among  the  clergy 
there  is  a  tendency,  like  that  which  existed  among 
the  heathen  priesthood,  to  profess  and  follow  two 
religions,  an  esoteric  and  an  exoteric  one :  they 
have  one  belief  for  themselves  and  another  which 
they  teach.  Their  tongues  are  tied  with  theological 
bands  which  will  not  allow  them  to  speak  freely. 
Those  outside  of  Christian  organizations  take 
refuge  in  an  ignorance  which  they  would  be 
ashamed  to  own  on  any  other  subject,  which  they 
call  Agnosticism,  or  they  make  "lies  their  refuge". 
Occidental  religion  is  a  long  way  from  where  it 

98 


should  be,  after  nearly  two  thousand  years  of  the 
teaching  of  Christ,  and  the  hope  of  progressive 
Christianity  must  it  would  seem,  be  henceforth  in 
the  Orient.  When  the  East  and  the  West  shall  have 
met  and  Christ's  religion  shall  have  made  the  cir- 
cuit of  the  earth  and  returned  to  that  quarter  where 
it  had  its  first  beginning  and  is  there  established, 
we  may  then  salute  our  Lord  as  Salvator  Mundi! 
indeed  and  realize  what  that  title  means. 

If  men  could  purchase  admission  into  heaven 
by  the  payment  of  money  or  by  deeds  of  service, 
there  would  possibly  be  no  lack  of  candidates ;  but 
simple  faith  and  love  are  things  too  small  to  enlist 
devotees.  If  heaven  could  be  gained  by  the  num- 
ber of  prayers  said,  no  string  of  beads  would  be 
long  enough  to  tell  the  number  men  would  say ; 
if  fastings  or  flagellations  would  avail,  men  would 
starve  or  flog  themselves  to  death.  Men  in  all 
ages,  like  Naaman,  have  despised  the  simple  waters 
at  their  door  and  desired  to  do  "some  great  thing", 
but  no  great  thing  is  given  them  to  do.  "Where- 
withal shall  I  come  before  the  Lord"?  they  ask. 

"Will  the  Lord  be  pleased  with  thousands  of  rams 
Or  with  ten  thousands  of  rivers  of  oil  ? 
Shall  I  give  my  first-born   for  my  transgression, 
The  fruit  of  my  body  for  the  sin  of  my  soul?" 

And  the  prophet  answers  : 

"He  hath  shewed  thee,  O  man!  what  is  good; 
And  what  doth  the  Lord  require  of  thee, 
But  to  do  justly,  and  to  love  mercy, 
And  to  walk  humbly  with  thy  God." 

When  men  came  to  the  Baptist  and  asked  him  what 

99 


they  should  do,  he  answered,  Your  duty  always ;  if 
you  are  a  tax-collector  exact  no  more  than  that 
which  is  appointed  you,  if  you  are  a  soldier  be  con- 
tent with  your  wages,  and  to  the  unofficial  people 
he  said,  If  you  have  two  coats  impart  to  him  that 
hath  none ;  if  you  have  meat  to  spare  do  likewise. 

But  if  we  think  seriously,  there  is  ONE  GREAT 
THING  which  God  does  give  us  to  do:  He  asks 
us  to  believe,  on  no  evidence  whatever,  direct,  or 
by  analogy  that  our  senses  may  perceive,  that  eter- 
nal life  is  a  possession  for  which  it  is  worth  while 
to  suffer  ANYTHING  and  to  sacrifice  EVERY- 
THING, and  to  live  accordingly.  The  gist  of  true 
religion  is  contained  in  our  Lord's  speech  to  the 
woman  of  Samaria  at  Jacob's  well :  "God  is  a  Spirit 
and  they  who  worship  him  must  worship  him  in 
Spirit  and  in  Truth."  No  number  of  prayers,  no 
fastings,  philanthropy  or  works  of  mercy  will  weigh 
in  the  balance  against  a  real  and  sincere  love  of 
God  in  the  heart.  One  heart/dJ  prayer  will  pre- 
vail when  a  million  merely  said  will  have  no  effect. 
Eye  service  and  lip  service  count  for  nothing. 

"Thou  shalt  have  none  other  Gods  but  me" 
were  the  words  heard  on  Mount  Sinai ;  "For  I  the 
Lord  your  God  am  a  jealous  God".  For  jealous, 
let  us  read  zealous.  God  could  not  have  been 
jealous,  as  we  understand  the  word,  of  the  gods 
of  Egypt,  for  they  were  no  Gods ;  nor  of  a  thing 
made  in  the  similitude  of  a  calf  which  eateth  hay, 
nor  of  the  gods  of  Greece  and  Rome,  who  were  often 
a  jest  to  their  own  devotees.  But  he  was  zealous 
for  the  honor  due  him  and  that  it  should  not  be 
given  to  others,  and  the  reason  of  this  is  simple. 

100 


All  spiritual  benefits  are  derived  from  God  alone, 
and  for  man  to  recognize  anyone  but  the  True  God 
as  the  giver  of  such  is  to  cut  himself  off  from  the 
very  spiritual  benefits  he  is  seeking  which  only 
God  can  bestow,  by  reliance  on  so-called  gods  who 
hear  not,  nor  see,  nor  know. 

We  offer  up  our  prayers  and  supplications  to 
God  in  the  name  of  or  "through  Jesus  Christ  our 
Lord".  If  we  were  to  be  asked  why  we  do  this 
we  should  most  probably  say  that  it  is  because  it 
is  only  through  the  Son  that  we  can  have  access  to 
the  Father ;  but  this  is  not  the  full  reason :  God  is 
not  an  abstraction,  but  a  Real  personality  and  he 
desires  to  be  known  to  his  children  as  he  knows 
them.  In  the  days  of  Judea  there  were  many 
gods,  as  there  are  to-day,  and,  so  that  there  might 
be  no  misunderstanding  as  to  whom  they  were  ad- 
dressing, the  ONE  True  God  was  addressed  as 
the  God  of  Abraham,  of  Isaac  and  of  Jacob.  The 
prophets  of  Baal  called  upon  their  god,  "O  Baal, 
hear  us";  and  when  Elijah's  turn  came  he  cried, 
not  to  any  abstract  Being,  but  to  the  "Lord  God  of 
Abraham,  Isaac  and  of  Israel".  Likewise  the 
Christian,  that  there  may  be  no  misunderstanding, 
addresses  his  prayers  to  the  Father  of  the  Lord 
Jesus  Christ. 

"Be  ye  holy"  saith  the  Lord.  Why?  Will  our 
personal  holiness  save  us  ?  No !  God  gives  no 
such  answer.  Be  ye  holy  saith  the  Lord  "for  I  the 
Lord  your  God  am  holy".  If  we  desire  to  spend 
an  Eternity  in  his  presence,  is  it  unreasonable  for 
him  to  expect  from  us  a  bearing  fit  for  such  so- 
ciety? 

101 


1  • ,  • 

•   • 


The  mission  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  to  the 
Jews  was  a  failure.  His  mission  to  the  Gentiles 
is  a  failure  as  far  as  concerns  the  individual  who 
fails  to  realize  that  Jesus  Christ  is  God  and  a  living, 
reigning  King  with  whom  he  may  be  in  personal 
and  constant  touch.  He  offered  himself  to  the 
Jews  and  the  Jews  rejected  him,  to  their  condemna- 
tion. He  offers  himself  to  whosoever  will  accept 
him,  and  whosoever  rejects  him  stands  in  like 
peril.  In  the  days  before  the  crucifix  had  usurped 
the  place  of  the  simple  cross  as  the  symbol  of 
Christianity,  the  Saviour's  words  "Behold  I  am 
alive  forevermore"  had  a  meaning  which  is  hardly 
realized  in  these  days.  Jesus  was  not  then  regarded 
as  a  dead  man  with  his  poor  human  arms  nailed  to 
a  dead  tree;  but  a  living  personality  whose  loving 
outstretched  arms  were  both  able  and  willing  to 
embrace  all  mankind.  Such  is  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ  to-day.  And  man,  what  of  him?  Every 
man  born  into  the  world  is  another  Adam,  of  the 
earth,  earthly.  Every  man  born  into  the  family  of 
God  is  a  Christ  in  miniature,  with  a  nature  like 
his,  both  human  and  divine. 


We  have  covered  much  ground  in  our  exami- 
nation. We  have  gone  over  many  well  beaten  paths 
and  pointed  out  many  already  very  familiar  objects 
but  this  could  not  be  avoided.  We  have  diverged 
many  times  from  a  direct  path,  and  have  some- 
times retraced  our  steps,  but  we  have  never  lost 
sight  of  the  main  thoroughfare — the  Road  to  Sal- 
vation. If  anything  has  been  said  which  challenges 

IO2 


seemingly  settled  beliefs,  at  least  no  FACT  of 
Christianity  has  been  impugned.  If  stress  has  been 
laid  on  the  circumstance  that  the  Mission  of  the 
Lord  Jesus  was  primarily  to  the  Jewish  nation  and 
that  his  teaching  was  altogether  addressed  to  Jewish 
hearers,  and  that  the  work  of  converting  the  Gen- 
tiles to  a  knowledge  of  the  True  God  was  delegated 
to  other  hands  than  his  own,  the  Message  to  hu- 
manity at  large  with  which  the  Lord  of  Life  was 
charged  has  not  been  concealed,  nor  the  superiority 
of  the  new  covenant  to  the  old  lost  sight  of.  The 
differences  our  Saviour  unmistakably  defined,  and 
it  would  have  been  strange,  indeed,  if  the  founder 
of  a  religion  had  failed  to  declare  its  principles  and 
to  designate  the  conditions  of  membership  in  it. 
These  were  made  so  plain  by  the  Lord  Jesus  that 
it  is  quite  unnecessary  to  go  beyond  his  own  words 
for  a  clear  exposition  of  all  the  absolute  essentials 
of  the  Christian  religion  which  may  now  be  sum- 
marized. 

In  our  Lord's  time  and  nation,  men  lived  under 
the  LAW.  With  this  the  Gentile  world  then  had 
no  concern  whatever.  It  has  never  rightly  had 
any  concern  with  it  since.  The  Gentile,  after  the 
Jew,  was  heir  to  the  PROMISE  not  to  the  Law. 
This  promise  was  to  Abraham  and  his  seed,  Christ. 
The  law,  at  the  best,  was  but  a  temporary  expedient, 
added  because  of  transgressions,  and  its  institution, 
430  years  after  the  promise,  did  not  make  the  latter 
of  no  effect.  The  Promise  of  Christ  to  the  Gentiles 
was  never  annulled,  and  when  the  time  came  for 
them  to  realize  it  they  succeeded  to  the  Promise 
with  as  clear  a  title  as  if  there  had  never  been  the 

103 


blot  of  the  Law  upon  it.  The  Law  is  to  the  Chris- 
tian as  if  it  had  never  existed.  It  has  no  more 
saving  power  for  him  than  the  precepts  of  Solomon 
or  the  maxims  of  Confucius.  The  last  dispensa- 
tion was  the  gift  to  man  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  the 
same  Spirit  that  was  in  Christ.  The  two  things,  heir- 
ship  to  the  LAW  and  heirship  to  the  PROMISE, 
are  utterly  irreconcilable.  "Moses  gave  us  the 
Law",  says  the  beloved  disciple,  "Jesus  Christ — 
grace  and  truth".  It  was  not  a  LAW  that  he  gave 
us,  but  an  INSPIRATION.  The  first  missionary 
to  the  Gentiles  could  not  understand  how  his  con- 
verts in  a  certain  place  could  think  differently,  un- 
less they  were  "bewitched".  It  should  be  quite 
unnecessary,  nearly  two  thousand  years  afterwards, 
to  lay  down  this  proposition  again,  but  it  cannot 
be  disguised  that  in  this  day  and  generation  a  great 
many  Christians  act  and  think  as  if  the  observance 
of  the  Decalogue  were  a  determining  factor  in  the 
Salvation  of  man. 

The  mission  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  was  to 
establish  an  organization  which  should  embrace  all 
mankind,  Jew  and  Gentile  alike,  Barbarian,  Scyth- 
ian, bond  and  free ;  circumstances  have  caused 
this  organization  to  be  called  the  Christian  Church. 
The  entire  absence  of  the  Law  and  the  gift  of  the 
Holy  Spirit  in  its  place  are  its  essential  features. 

The  essentials  of  membership  in  the  organiza- 
tion are: 

I.  Faith  in  Jesus  Christ  as  a  Divine  Person- 
age. Concerning  this,  the  Church's  Head  has  said : 

"I  and  my  Father  are  one." 

"He  that  hath  seen  me  hath  seen  the  Father." 

104 


"Ye  call  me  Master  and  Lord,  and  ye  say  well, 
for  so  I  am." 

"Ye  believe  in  God,  believe  also  in  me" 

"Verily,  verily,  I  say  unto  you,  before  Abra- 
ham was,  I  am." 

"I  came  down  from  heaven  to  do  the 

will  of  him  that  sent  me." 

"He  that  honoreth  not  the  Son,  honoreth  not 
the  Father." 

"God  so  loved  the  world  that  he  gave  his  only 
begotten  Son  that  whosoever  believeth  on  him 
should  not  perish." 

"I  am  come  a  light  into  the  world,  that  whoso- 
ever believeth  on  me  may  not  abide  in  darkness." 

"Everyone  therefore  who  shall  confess  me  be- 
fore men,  him  will  I  also  confess  before  my  Father 
which  is  in  heaven." 

"He  that  heareth  my  word  and  believeth  Him 
that  sent  me  hath  eternal  life." 


"He  that  believeth  NOT  hath  been  judged  al- 
ready, because  he  hath  not  believed  on  the  name  of 
the  only  begotten  Son  of  God.33 

"Whosoever  shall  DENY  me  before  men,  him 
will  I  also  deny  before  my  Father  which  is  in 
heaven." 

"If  ye  believe  NOT  that  I  am  he  ye  shall  die 
in  your  sins" 

II.  Baptism  in  water  in  the  name  of  the  Father 
and  of  the  Son  and  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  constituting 
a  REGENERATION  or  NEW  BIRTH  by  which 

105 


a  covenant  relationship  is  established  between  God 
and  the  individual  baptized. 

The  testimony  of  our  Lord  as  to  this  is  very 
clear. 

"Go  ye,"  said  he  to  the  apostles,  "and  make 
disciples  of  all  nations  baptizing  them  in  the  name 
of  the  Father  and  of  the  Son  and  of  the  Holy 
Ghost." 

"He  that  believeth  and  is  baptized  shall  be 
saved." 


"Verily,  verily,  I  say  unto  thee  Except  a  man 
be  born  of  water  and  the  Spirit  he  cannot  enter 
into  the  Kingdom  of  God!' 

III.  The  reception  under  the  form  of  bread 
and  wine  of  the  Body  and  Blood  of  Christ,  by  which 
the  covenant  relation  established  by  Baptism  is 
kept  alive  and  the  disciple  is  brought  into  direct 
Communion  with  God. 

Our  Lord's  words  hereon  are  likewise  unmis- 
takable. 

"I  am  the  living  bread  which  came  out  of 
heaven :  if  any  man  eat  of  this  bread  he  shall  live 
forever." 

"He  that  eateth  my  flesh  and  drinketh  my  blood 
hath  eternal  life;  and  I  will  raise  him  up  at  the 
last  day." 

* 

"Verily,  verily,  I  say  unto  you  Except  ye  eat 
the  flesh  of  the  Son  of  Man  and  drink  his  blood  ye 
have  no  life  in  you!' 

1 06 


There  are  two  questions  which  the  candidate 
for  heaven  must  answer.  The  first  is :  Are  you 
in  covenant  relationship  to  Almighty  God?  And 
the  second  is :  Are  you  in  direct  communion  with 
him?  With  these  answered  affirmatively  he  may 
have  three  companions  on  his  journey  through  life : 
"The  GRACE  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  and  the 
LOVE  of  God  and  the  FELLOWSHIP  of  the 
Holy  Ghost.  Amen." 


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